Sellevision: A Novel - Softcover

Burroughs, Augusten

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312430078 ISBN 13: 9780312430078

Publisher: Picador, 2010

Synopsis

The hilarious first novel by the #1 bestselling author of Running with Scissors, Dry, A Wolf at the Table, and You Better Not Cry, Sellevision is Augusten Burrough's darkly funny and vastly entertaining skewering of a very troubled home-shopping channel.

Welcome to the world of Sellevision, America's premier retail broadcasting network. When Max Andrews, the much loved and handsome (that is, lonely and gay) host of a "Toys for Tots" segment, accidentally exposes himself in front of millions of kids, Sellevision faces its first big scandal. As Max struggles to find a new job in television, the popular and perky host Peggy Jean Smythe is receiving sinister emails from a stalker. Popping pills and drinking heavily, she fails to notice that her husband is spending a lot of time with the young babysitter who lives next door. Then there's Leigh, whose affair with married Sellevision boss Howard Toast is going nowhere until she announces their relationship on air. A blistering satire of our overcharged, scandal-obsessed world, Sellevision is "an absolute howl . . . wicked fun" (New York Daily News).

About this title

Review:

Light and funny, with a bitter aftertaste, the action of Sellevision takes place behind the scenes (and on the set) of a successful television shopping network, where a feminine role model, Peggy Jean Smythe, the married, Christian mother of three, begins receiving suspicious e-mail from a viewer who insists that Peggy's hairy earlobe is obscuring her presentation of jewelry during the broadcast. When Peggy fails to respond to the e-mail, but silently waxes her lobe, the cruel notes escalate, until Peggy believes herself to be suffering from a hormonal crisis that has given her a mustache, a gruff voice, and the manner of a lumberjack. Meanwhile, one of her cohosts, Max Andrews, has been fired for accidentally exposing himself during a children's special, and learns just how undesirable a commodity a penis-baring ex-Sellevision host can be on the job market. The book is an unusually smooth read for a first novel, with six or seven truly inspired lines. --Regina Marler

About the Author:

Augusten Burroughs was raised in Amherst, Massachusetts. An advertising copywriter since the age of 19, he lives in New York City. Sellevision is his first novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0312430078
• ISBN 13: 9780312430078
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 256