Bitch Goddess - Softcover

Rodi, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452283108 ISBN 13: 9780452283107

Publisher: Plume, 2002

Synopsis

In Bitch Goddess, Robert Rodi turns his riotous wit on Hollywood sex and stardom. Told entirely through interviews, e-mails, fan magazine puff pieces, film reviews, shooting scripts, greeting cards, extortion notes, and court depositions, this is a hilarious account of the on-again, off-again career of Viola Chute, the B-grade sex symbol who slept her way to the middle-and slid downward from there.

After making a big comeback on a nighttime soap, Viola decides it's time to pen her memoirs. But when E. Manfred Harry, her ghostwriter, turns up some serious dirt, the bitch goddess fires him. The ever-resourceful Harry turns the book into an unauthorized tell-all biography, and Viola's star once again begins its descent...

Will she be asked back for a second season?
Will she make Celebrity Magazine's "Best-Dressed" list again this year?
Will her agent ever return her calls?


Praise for Robert Rodi:

"Rodi whips action around faster than Julia Child working up a souffle." (The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel)

"Irrestibly funny!" (Quentin Crisp)

About this title

About the Author

Robert Rodi is the author of Fag Hag, Closet Case, Drag Queen, and Kept Boy, all available in Plume editions. In his spare time, he writes the comic book series Codename: Knockout for DC/Vertigo, about sexy superspy Angela Devlin and her hunky gay sidekick Go-Go Fiasco.

Reviews

Rodi uses the checkered career of a B-movie bimbo as a vehicle to skewer the cult of celebrity in his latest novel, a typically raunchy romp that begins with actress Viola Chute dictating her memoirs to her ghost writer, E. Manfred Harry. Harry certainly has plenty of material to work with Chute's past includes a veritable conga line of schlock movies, former husbands and enough scandalous behavior to keep a posse of gossip columnists busy for a long time. But both the bio project and Chute's career go down the tubes when the prime-time soap opera diva gets fired after demanding a million dollars an episode, and the network replaces Chute with her arch-rival, Georgia Kirkby, a serious but pompous actress who also has a stage background. The beleaguered Chute is also busy fending off a lawsuit from a paparazzo, and when the actress cuts Harry loose, he gets hired by Kirkby to dig up enough dirt on Chute's past to ruin her. Rodi fleshes out his rather skimpy primary plot by telling his story exclusively through letters, e-mails, interviews and the like, a tactic that works for the most part, although as the subplots and secondary characters begin to pile up the book becomes a bit busy. But most of this is just an excuse for Rodi's over-the-top commentary on the excesses of Hollywood culture and our obsession with celebrities; although occasionally silly, there's plenty of juicy fun for those who like their movie heroes well done.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* The publisher should print a warning on this one: "DANGER: Reading this book in designated quiet spaces risks rousing the wrath of others with chuckles, giggles, belly laughs, and outright guffaws." Rodi stands the epistolary novel on its head, creating an effervescent cocktail of satire, mystery, and romance from an inspired assemblage of e-mail, recorded phone messages, transcriptions of taped interviews, newspaper clippings, theater and film reviews, Christmas cards, fan-magazine puffery, and scripts from The Winds of Wyndamville, a wildly popular Dallas cum Dynasty nighttime soaper. At the center of this collage is Viola Chute, a former B-movie sleaze queen currently riding new heights of fame because of her surprise success as Wyndamville's virtuous Grand Duchess Samantha. She has hired freelance writer E. Manfred Harry--call him Harry--to help with her memoirs, and the more he interviews her and tries to reconcile the snowballing discrepancies, the more she puts him off, making her an enigma wrapped in--not mystery, but faux ermine. Add to this a $10 million lawsuit from an injured papparazo, duelling divas, and a set of nude shots from Viola's past, and camp hilarity explodes off the page. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452283108
• ISBN 13: 9780452283107
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320