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The Gift Bag Chronicles: A Novel [Paperback]

Hilary De Vries (Author)
3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

Price: $12.95 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
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Book Description

June 21, 2005
On generating the perfect party in Hollywood:
If celebrities don’t walk your red carpet, you don’t exist.
If you don’t make Page Six, you don’t exist.
To get ten celebrities to show up, invite four hundred. And send a car.
Publicity is the only job you can do perfectly and still fail.
And the gift bag totally matters.

As the newly promoted head of event planning for one of L.A.’s top publicity firms, Alex Davidson spends her days making decisions of utmost importance: Grey Goose or Belvedere? MAC or Stila? Queen Latifah or Chloë Sevigny? And though her boyfriend, agency president Charles Evers, lives on the other coast, she could be doing worse. But leave it to her mother to point out the obvious: After one failed, childless marriage, Alex is the “career divorcée” and the antithesis of her sister, the perfect stay-at-home mom. And there’s no spin in the world that can cover up the growing rift between Alex and Charles.

From dealing with outrageously self-important clients and holier-than-thou C-listers to trying to make sense of her growing attraction to a man who is not her boyfriend but her best friend, Alex feels as if she’s about one Red Bull shy of a meltdown. With her professional future hanging in the balance, she has the biggest party of the season to pull off. And the real question is: Will the gift bags measure up?

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Editorial Reviews

Review

An all-the-angles-working film publicist seeks earthly happiness. Failing that, she throws a bunch of parties.

"In Hollywood," observes our protagonist, "you only fail upward." Perhaps so, but mess up a gift bag, and the prospects of becoming a bag lady loom large. Alex Davidson, whom we met in de Vries's So 5 Minutes Ago (2004), is now 36 and just a touch desperate to settle down again, though not so much that she'll turn off her cell phone. The worm has definitely turned, she realizes, when her opposite-coast mother asks her for tips on what to put in the gift bags she's getting together for her next party, the celebrity requirement that swag come with any appearance now having entered the general culture. Alex knows all about this; jetting her way east, she has to contend with a gift-bag crisis of epic proportions, for party-giver Jennifer, "a former exotic dancer and now bride-to-be of Jeffrey Hawker, the much-married, much-divorced star of the long-running sitcom Lovin' It,"is about to melt down over the fact that the gift-bag garters have a matte, not sateen, finish. Alex is having a meaningful something with a partner in her firm, the studly Charles, so that now she's "no longer the Emma-Thompson-lonely-spinster but a slutty Britney Spears wannabe stuck in a Woody Allen fantasy sequence with my Rittenhouse-Square-lunch-at-the-club mother." (Whew!) Alas, even in Hollywood, happy endings are hard to come by, and, meanwhile, there's yet another childish star to coddle. De Vries's storyline is a soufflÉ, but she has a sharp eye and a good ear, and she turns in wise observations on a town little known for wisdom: Why is it, she muses, that men can't close a deal, always leave something for someone else to pick up? When did it come to pass "that the only movies you see on planes are the losers?" Curious minds want to know.

The Day of the Locust it ain't–but de Vries's slight confection offers great entertainment.
- Kirkus Reviews


Praise for So 5 Minutes Ago

“A delicious Hollywood girls’ book written with an insider’s wit. I gobbled it up gleefully, like chocolate.”
Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones’s Diary

“A comic novel with a publicist’s-eye view of Hollywood [whose heroine] has a sharp, amusing eye for the way this world works.”
Janet Maslin, The New York Times

About the Author

Hilary De Vries a veteran entertainment journalist who has covered Hollywood for more than a decade. In addition to being the author of So 5 Minutes Ago, she is a regular contributor to The New York Times, and has written for Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, W, The Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Villard (June 21, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1400063493
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400063499
  • Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,131,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

24 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.4 out of 5 stars (24 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Escapist Fun, December 1, 2005
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This review is from: The Gift Bag Chronicles: A Novel (Paperback)
The Gift Bag Chronicles provides a sometimes humorous account of Alex Davidson, Hollywood party planner. Most of us have probably read these types of novels before- Stressed out L.A. life, boyfriend troubles, difficult rich people who demand ridiculous things, so on and so on. De Vries' novel doesn't really take a unique approach to this theme, and I felt that a couple of the subplots were neglected a bit at the end. However, I take the book for what it is: Good escapist fun that's easy to read.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars so boring i couldn't get past the second chapter, October 18, 2005
By 
Veronica (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Gift Bag Chronicles: A Novel (Paperback)
too many endless details and monotonous chatter and not enough story. if the book is about a party planner, why not start it at a party? i just didn't care about this woman or her boring life.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars In the 'Bag', June 28, 2005
This review is from: The Gift Bag Chronicles: A Novel (Paperback)
I have learned to steer clear of trendy, chick-lit books, especially if they're set in showiz circles; I mean, that girl who wrote "The Devil Wears Prada" is nearly illiterate, and don't even get me startedon Plum Sykes' attempts at stringing together a sentence. BUT, despite the genre that "The Gift Bag Chronicles" may get lumped into, the bottom line is it's just a really good read. I found myself getting sooo sucked into the story of Alex and her 3000-miles-away-boyfriend Charles and how some guy who's utterly NOT her type (Oscar) slowly starts to work his way into her life. The thing is, It's sexy and fun and these people are not stupid and you won't be embarassed or ashamed after you've read it.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Honey, are you up? Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
host committee members, gift bag, event producer
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Hot Fat, The Gift Bag Chronicles, Howard Finnegan, Bryn Mawr, C's Christmas, Fred Segal, Hancock Park, Bel Air, Mickey Delano, Diamond Council, Labor Day, Vanity Fair, Alex Davidson, Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, Paris Hilton, South Central, Access Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Emma Thompson, Jay Reed, Jennifer Schwartzbaum, Julianne Moore, Lucy Liu
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