Creative Differences : A novel

With nothing but savvy and hard work, a secretary rises to vice-president of a major movie studio, survives in Tinsel Town without selling out, enjoys her success, and makes lots of money, in a realistic novel of business success

Robinson's insider novel (she is an executive at Columbia Pictures) proves what every sensible person who doesn't live in New York or Los Angeles already knows intuitively--the movie business isn't what it's cracked up to be, and neither is reading about it. The narrator/heroine, called "Pet" by her colleagues, rises from secretary to executive vice-president of a large film company, and with each promotion it is increasingly vague what she really does except criticize her secretaries. As the story gets farther away from the people who actually make films, it becomes less and less interesting. Neither the narrator nor anyone else is a dynamic character, and corporate power struggles have been described better by others. Even when several characters use drugs, no side effects or other inconveniences result. For all the heroine's musing, she never does understand that it is indeed her obsession with her success that prompts her perfect husband to seek other arrangements. If Hollywood were truly as flat and tedious as this book suggests, everyone would pack up and sell insurance.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

First novelist Robinson knows what she's talking about when she tells the tale of a woman who works her way up the ranks in the film industry--from secretary to publicist to senior publicist to director to 1senior director to senior vice president to executive vice president--because Robinson herself did much the same thing, ultimately becoming president of marketing at Columbia Pictures. The book begins with the heroine as a secretary, sitting at her desk wondering whether to have her hair cut and ends with her wondering the same thing, except this time she's sitting in a private jet. Though Robinson captures the stereotypes and language of the film industry, this story is curiously flat and fails to communicate the excitement, passion, and ruthlessness of a woman's climb up the corporate ladder. Robinson's dry style would seem to fit the nonfiction genre better, and one wonders why she didn't write a memoir instead. A marginal purchase.
-Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Cty . Free Libs . , Seaside, Cal.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.