Customer Reviews

Hollywoodland: An American Fairy Tale

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read Hollywoodland in two days. It was that good. Jennifer Banash's story reads like a cross between a tabloid drama and an bad LCD trip. I felt so much empathy for the main character. This book goes to show how seedy the underbelly of Hollywood can be! I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in celebrities or the dark promise of fame. It's a great read!

I had been waiting to read this book for what seemed like forever. I FINALLY found a library that carried it, and couldn't wait to dig in. Well...upon finishing it, I wasn't quite sure what I thought. Basically, if you like Hollywood gossip magazines, and are at all interested in the fall of movie stars, then this is the book for you. It reads like one very long STAR magazine.

I liked the main character (Sharlene/Sierra), even when she was obnoxious and delusional, and the story moved along at a nice pace, but I had a VERY hard time with the whole 'Presidential affair/rape' story-line. It was just soooo ridiculous. And the fairy-tale phrases thrown in after every few paragraphs was a bit annoying, but overall, I must say I enjoyed it.

As I said, if you like gossip mags, and check Perezhilton.com everyday, then this is definitely a book for you. My few complaints aside, Ms. Banash does a wonderful job keeping the reader engrossed, and keeping things interesting. I'd absolutely pick up another one of her novels.

Loved the novel. I went to the University of Iowa and had a chance to meet the author in class. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember finding this book extremely entertaining. The fairy tale life of Sierra quickly turns into a train wreck that one cannot turn away from. With all of Sierra's flaws, Jennifer Banash does an amazing job of creating a flawed character who invokes sympathy without pity from the reader. It's definitely worth the time (it's a quick read anyway).

Ladies and gentlemen, readers of all ages, meet Sierra, the hottest thing to hit Hollywood since Marilyn Monroe. She is willowy and blonde, with turquoise eyes and that extra something that makes both women and men fall in love with her. She is Marilyn, she is Paris, she is Britney and Lindsay and Pam. She's a walking tragedy, another "casualty of Hollywood," and she is the heroine of HOLLYWOODLAND: AN AMERICAN FAIRY TALE.

Author Jennifer Banash reveals Sierra when she is still Sharlene, growing up humbly in Bakersfield and dreaming of the big-time. When she moves to Hollywood, she becomes a porn star, headlining a series of adult movies based on fairy tales. People take notice of the sad beauty with the startling eyes, and she's offered a television show. Everyone and everything is clamoring for her -- the rock stars, the camera, the press, the drugs, the designers, even the President of the United States. But Hollywood is fickle, and it isn't long before our Alice in Wonderland starts spiraling down the rabbit hole, with nothing to cling to but her mistakes. At the beginning of the novel, when we first meet Sierra, she's holding a gun to her head.

HOLLYWOODLAND is a gothic fairy tale for the ages, the story of one woman's dream and her ultimate undoing. In these days of Lindsay and Paris and Britney and their repsective hijinks, such a novel couldn't seem more appropriate. Banash brings to life a world where Hollywood glamour is juxtaposed with its seediness on a daily basis, where the drugs run like water and the money seems endless. The novel is part E! True Hollywood Story and part a modernized version of Alice in Wonderland, with plenty of recognizable nods to real-life people and events. This isn't a humorous look at life in Hollywood: It's an incredibly sad and unfortunate one. Although I was expecting the novel to be a bit more light-hearted than it was, I can understand why Banash chose be so serious. I thought the novel was organized very effectively, and Sierra came absolutely to life in first-time author Banash's hands. She's such a sympathetic heroine, so child-like in her thoughts and actions, that your heart really breaks for her as she sprials further and further into addiction and depression.

But I'll echo what the previous reviewer said: Sierra's affair with the President and the events resulting from it were an absolutely ridiculous part of the plot, in my opinion. I'm pretty sure Banash was attempting to reproduce Marilyn Monroe's famous affair with JFK, which, if she had actually accomplished this, would have made sense. But instead, it was like she just decided to retell the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton tale instead -- LITERALLY. Yes, that's right -- the famous cigar found its way into these pages. This just made the whole thing seem silly, and it was confusing to boot: After all, I thought Banash was borrowing from the life of a Hollywood starlet, not a White House intern.

Other than that, though, I really enjoyed HOLLYWOODLAND. Yes, there are quite a few typos (probably largely due to the fact that the novel was published by an independent press), the word "buttery" is used a few too many times (to refer to leather, complexions, sensations, sunlight, etc.), and the story itself is a little cliche. But I really liked the way Banash set up her story, and I loved the continuous references to Alice in Wonderland and the way Sierra's life reflected them. Anyone who is fascinated with the Hollywood lifestyle, who pores over People magazine, who appreciates a modern twist on an old story, should pick up HOLLYWOODLAND right away. You're in for a treat!

As a lover of chick lit and Hollywood stories, both real and fictional, this book looked right up my alley. And at times it's highly entertaining. However, Banash, in, what I suppose is her attempt at appearing trendy, really stretches her fiction with the presidential fling. It was so obviously Bill Clinton that I'm almost surprised that Rush Limburgh isn't selling this book on his radio show. This part of the story just doesn't work and brings down the rest of it with it. Obviously, the writer was looking to make it a modern day Marilyn Monroe/JFK affair because we've read it all before during the Monica days. It's all just too far fetched, and Hillary (not that I'm a big fan of hers) was no where near the doormat of this first lady. Wish Banash would have stuck more with her story about abused, used Sharlene and her attempts to climb the Hollywood Hills.

I have not had a chance to read it yet, but it looks like a good book. I was a little disappointed because it was not the book I was looking for. The book that I wanted was the one that told the story behind the movie Hollywoodland. But I will eventually read it.