The Look - Hardcover

Blanchard, Nina; Barsocchini, Peter

3.64

22 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525937951 ISBN 13: 9780525937951

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 1995

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

A top modeling agent draws on her insider's knowledge to create the story of Jessica Cartwright, the head of a modeling agency who fights to save her clients from becoming sexual pawns. 25,000 first printing. National ad/promo. Tour.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly:

Models and the men who use them for profit and other base needs wallow in a mudslide of glitz, sleaze and money in a debut blatantly tailored to prurient interest. Blanchard, the modeling agent who discovered Cheryl Tiegs, among others, and Barsocchini (Ghost) deliver a facile tale about the ugly business of beautiful women. Forty-year-old Jessica Cartwright is one of the industry's top agents, best known for creating supermodel Caddie Dean, taking her from troubled teen to the cover of Time. Caddie has a sordid, painful past, and her present is not much better, given the violent and greedy husband who's determined to ride her star to compensate for his own insufficiencies. Jessica, a fair-dealing, level-headed businesswoman, tends to her charge's public image and private anguish. But her world is rocked when self-styled rival agent Garret Stowe takes the modeling world by storm and stealth, ruthlessly using the women he holds in sexual thrall. Soon, Jessica finds herself vying with Garret for Caddie and other top models in the international high-fashion capitals, and the novel gathers suspense. Blanchard appears to be settling some scores here, and perhaps readers in the know will be able to suss them out through the whiff of roman a clef that hovers over the book. This is lurid fare, stocked with plenty of sex and violence, written in prose that's as subtle as a gob of pancake makeup and peopled by characters who are easily as animated as the most lively department store manikins. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Few things in life are as good as they look, especially if they involve huge sums of money. Blanchard, head of a prestigious modeling agency that has handled such talents as Cheryl Tiegs, bares the seamy side of the glamour world (with her coauthor's help) in her first novel, a sexy, high-energy, high-stakes tale of ruthless ambition. Blanchard knows her stuff. Her characters, from Caddie Dean, a heart-stoppingly beautiful supermodel with a sordid past, to Garret Stowe, surely one of pop fiction's slickest, hardest working, and most despicable villains, ring true, and the story line--a suspenseful tangle of agency takeovers, profitable seductions, pimping, blackmail, risquead campaigns ala Calvin Klein, and a touch of violence--is compelling in its knowledgeable detail. Fashion fascinates us with its extremes, its arrogance and silliness, its sexual promise and cosmopolitan elitism. Blanchard serves up plenty of glitz but reminds us that the fashion industry, like so many other lucrative endeavors, can be nothing more than an arena for people who will do anything for power, money, or revenge. Donna Seaman

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.