22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MLU is a great read, November 30, 2003
This review is from: My Life Uncovered (Red Dress Ink Novels) (Paperback)
My Life Uncovered is a fun-filled roller coaster ride through the competing worlds of Hollywood and adult entertainment. With the help of girl-next-door Laura Taylor, Lynn Isenberg gives the rest of us an inside look at a world of steals and deals that before remained a mystery. I laughed and then I laughed some more and then I laughed so hard I cried.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Eh. Neither sexy nor revealing., June 25, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: My Life Uncovered (Red Dress Ink Novels) (Paperback)
MY LIFE UNCOVERED has all the ingredients for a fun, provocative and witty read: insider Hollywood, the sex industry, sister marrying an ex-date of the heroine, Dad dating younger women.
It's the perfect set-up for the literary equivalent of a decadent dessert souffle. Unfortunately, MY LIFE UNCOVERED is as appetizing as a stale matzo.
This is author Isenberg's first novel, and it badly shows. Clunky writing such as "I didn't know it then, but I would come to know that Lincoln and its mysterious inhabitant soon enough" abound. The novel is a catalog of heroine Laura's actions (literally. Too many paragraphs to count start with "Two days later" or "One hour later" or "Three weeks later.") But while we know the contents of Laura's shopping cart, there's precious little insight into who she is. And when the insight does come, it's with heavy, on-the-nose ponderousness. Hint: it's usually preceded by a rabbinical lesson, just so you won't miss the significance.
The novel is heavy on exposition that is hard to trudge through. A sample: "I spin around to come face-to-face with Mitchell Mann, my old boyfriend. Four years ago, I delivered a script to him from Eric Leve at STA. At the time, Eric has just signed Mitchell, a young, charasmatic British music director with a burning desire to direct horror films. Eric got him his first gig directing Zombie Cometh for a mini-studio..." And it continues in this expository miniutiae vein for two and half paragraphs. By the time Laura gets around to greeting Mitchell, we've forgotten she was in the scene.
The book has such promising material, you find yourself reading past the point of annoyance in the hopes that somewhere, anywhere, a story will start to break out. Unfortunately, that never happens. And for a book that is set in the adult film industry, it is surprisingly un-sexy. Laura does have sexual encounters, including a threesome, but they leave as much impact on her - and are described in the same prose style - as does eating a pizza with her next door neighbors. When she meets the character who will be her love interest, he's given as much attention as any of the other myriad supporting characters who walk onto a page, say a line, and disappear for stretches at a time.
It also doesn't help that the book names the wrong utility (the Gas Company has nothing to do with electrical power in LA); gets the Telluride Film Festival mixed up with Sundance (the majority of the films at Telluride already have distributors, so few acquisitions execs go there to actually buy films - the buying frenzy happens at Sundance); and names the Getty as a possible wedding location (a quick look at its website tells you it's not available for weddings or other private events). Nitpicks, I know, but if you sell a book as an insider's view, it might be nice to get the details right.
I wanted to like MY LIFE UNCOVERED, but the writing gets in the way.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I'm In The Minority..., April 18, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: My Life Uncovered (Red Dress Ink Novels) (Paperback)
I didn't like this book at all. Laura, the main character, who has no prior interest in or knowledge of the porn industry, is desperate for money and so she writes a screenplay for a porn film. She writes it in three days, on no sleep, and it is so ground breaking and brilliant that it is immediately bought by a producer for more money than any other porn writer in the industry has ever received. Within a matter of weeks, the film has been made, earned critical raves and won several awards, and has become (as we are reminded about every five pages) "a cult classic". This quickly helps Laura get over her reservations and she writes six or seven more films, which are produced just as quickly and to just as lavish praise, in the space of a few months. Sigh. Come on, I enjoy chick lit as much as the next chick, but for me, there needs to be *some* realism for a story to work.
More distracting than the flimsy plot elements was the cheesy dialogue: "When I left Michigan and headed out west, I could feel the heat of adventure in front of me. I knew then that writing movies would be my way of creating social change" and "Why do you want to make love to me?" "To help you know yourself", and my personal favorite: "I went to synagogue to forgive myself for baring my breasts". Lines like this were so reminiscent of the dialogue that is typically in the kind of movies Laura made that I found myself wondering if the author has written some of these herself. If so, hopefully she has a better psuedonym than Bella Fleega! :-)
Most of the characters were completely one-dimensional stereotypes. There was the cigar chomping porn film company head taken straight from "The Godfather". There was the monosyllabic oaf of an ex-boyfriend, who geuinely can not understand why Laura dumped him just because he impregnated another woman. There was the saintly new boyfriend, kind and loving, who didn't even blink when Laura decided she needed a break from sex because hanging around porn movie sets was turning her off. Neurotic parents, an in the closet gay brother (who stops speaking to Laura because she tells him she's making a documentary about strippers, but openly admires her secret alter ego Bella - "I think she's fab"), a loyal best friend, etc etc etc. We've seen all these characters before, and in far better incarnations.
Honestly, I really did think this was an interesting set up, with the potential to be a hilarious chick lit romp. Unfortunately, the writing was just so poor that it never got off the ground.
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