| Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. The novel focuses on the lives of its three main characters Anne Welles, Jennifer North and Neely O'Hara In 1945, Anne Welles moves to New York City from Lawrenceville, Massachusetts, and finds employment with a talent agency representing the Broadway musical Hit the Sky. She meets Neely O'Hara (who changed her name from Ethel Agnes O'Neill), a vaudeville star living in her building, and recommends her for a role in the show’s chorus. Jennifer North, a showgirl regarded for her beauty but with limited talent, appears in the play as well. The three women become fast friends. Over the next twenty years, the women embark on careers that bring them to the heights of fame and eventual self-destruction. I read this in 1966 just after it was published. It was a struggle to watch characters I cared for do so poorly. Now 40 plus years later, I have watched friends struggle and fail in similar ways.
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| Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout. This is a science fiction novel by Philip José Farmer, writing pseudonymously as "Kilgore Trout," a fictional recurring character in many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. This book first appeared as a lengthy fictitious "excerpt"—written by Vonnegut, but attributed to Trout—in Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965). With Vonnegut's permission, Farmer expanded the fragment into an entire standalone novel (including, as an in-joke, a scene that incorporates all of Vonnegut's original text). Farmer's story was first published in two parts beginning in the December 1974 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The plot, in which Earth is destroyed by cosmic bureaucrats doing routine maintenance and the sole human survivor goes on a quest to find the "Definitive Answer to the Ultimate Question," bears some resemblance to the later Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.
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| Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins. Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War. Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things (don't even try to imagine the love story) and you'll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins' eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel--a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat. On one level, this is a book about identity, masquerade and disguise--about the false mustache of the world--but neither the mists of Laos nor the smog of Bangkok, neither the overcast of Seattle nor the fog of San Francisco, neither the murk of the intelligence community nor the mummery of the circus can obscure the linguistic phosphor that illuminates the pages of Villa Incognito. A female fan once wrote to Tom Robbins: "Your books make me think, they make me laugh, they make me horny and they make me aware of the wonder of everything in life." Villa Incognito will surely arouse a similar response in many readers, for in its lusty, amusing way it both celebrates existence and challenges our ideas about it. To say much more about a novel as fresh and surprising as Villa Incognito would run the risk of diluting the sheer fun of reading it. As his dedicated readers worldwide know full well, it's best to climb aboard the Tom Robbins tilt-a-whirl, kiss preconceptions and sacred cows goodbye and simply enjoy the ride. Make sure you stay seated while you read. |
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