How I Became A Famous Novelist

AUTHOR: Steve Hely
PUBLISHED: 2009
GENRE: Fiction

This book got picked purely for its title.  After all, who could resist the opportunity to learn how some other hapless fool went from aspiring writer to acclaimed novelist.  Hely's book is told in the first person, , full of sidebars and lists: "list of bestselling ideas"; "Miller Westly's notes"; "what happened at the first bar" (followed, unsurprisingly, by "what happened at the second bar").  It's supposed to be a casual conversation, two friends joking and talking.  But it's not casual.  It's unbelievably hyper-self-aware.  All that intense trying makes you tense.

Pete Tarslaw spends his days writing college admission essays for lazy teenagers.  When he gets a wedding invitation from his college girlfriend Polly, he decides that he has to finally make something of himself to show her how wrong she was to leave him.  He's watching an interview with Preston Brooks, wealthy novelist, when he decides that's what he'll do: he'll write a book.  But not a good book.  A book with every cliche, every foreign setting, every kooky subplot, everything anyone could ever want all in one book.  It's worked for others, he figures, so why not him?  He gets published, mainly because he has a friend who works for a publisher (how convenient).  But being a famous author isn't anything like he thought it would be.

When he's not writing, Tarslaw is studying the best-sellers list for clues as to how to get on there himself.  There's the aforementioned Preston Brooks, who writes books named Kindness of Birds about how one man changes the lives of a bunch of strangers.  There's Pamela McLaughlin's series of Trang Martinez novels, a Kay Scarpetta-esque character who finds murders everywhere.  Then there's Sageknights of Darkhorn, number 15 in something akin to Game of Thrones.  It's all a little too on the nose.  (Okay, it's a lot on the nose.)  Hely is that guy at the bar who interrupts his own story to laugh at it, rather than letting you laugh at it yourself, which you probably wouldn't do anyway, because it wasn't very funny.  Everything he writes is supposed to let you know just how in the know he is. 

By the time Hely tries to get serious, you're so done with his jokes that you don't care about his problems.  To make it worse, Hely's attempts at serious fall (seriously) short, ending up closer to whiny than deep.  It's the stench of desperation that does him in, really.  It sets in from the start and stinks up the whole thing.

LENGTH: 322 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Not particularly
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: If someone has to work that hard to convince you of how cool there are, it's not worth listening.