by Joan Juliet Buck
A contributing editor at Vogue, Buck is the daughter of movie producer Jules (The Ruling Class) Buck and the goddaughter of director John Huston. But it is not so much the knowing details as the devastating characterizations that distinguish this first novel. Uprooted from Hollywood at the age of 3, a girl passes a pampered childhood in France. Her stepfather is a noted film director who is incorrigibly self-destructive. Her mother is a soulless bitch. There's a pretty, vacuous stepsister. The girl herself is an ugly duckling and, desperate to remain close to the Beautiful People her mother had taught her to revere, she turns herself into a New York gossip magazine writer. With a cruel, cocky wit, Buck uses her poor-little-rich-girl theme to peel away the glamorous masks of moviemaking and journalism.
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