THE TALENT

Five Hollywood actresses wriggle under the microscope of an awards season.

This debut novel from longtime Variety correspondent D’Addario opens with the reading of the Best Actress nominees during an awards show, rewinds to take each leading lady through the months of machinations and publicity leading up to that night, then circles back to a weirdly anticlimactic conclusion. To the author’s credit, by then we can pretty easily keep the characters and their movies straight, possibly even better than in real life. Adria Benedict is the queen, already a three-time winner, something like Meryl Streep—though one hopes Meryl is more likable and less rigidly focused on her grand career. Her longtime rival, at least according to the media, is Jenny Van Meer, whose parallel career has gone conspicuously unawarded. Three younger actresses—a child star (comes with a momager), a smart British lesbian, and a beautiful drunk—complete the roster, and we keep track of a few also-rans, too, including a Black woman blocked by industry racism. There are photo shoots, magazine interviews, spin classes, meet-and-greets, and a lesser awards show, and all of it seems credible enough, if oddly unexciting, with each set-up for fireworks fizzling, sometimes offstage. Where are the scandals? The wardrobe failures? The paparazzi drama? D’Addario’s objective seems to be to convince us that snakes in a barrel are people too, and perhaps that’s not really the most fun that could have been had with these well-developed characters and premises. Some of the highlights of the book are the faux online columns and magazine articles slipped in along the way—perfectly snarky in their send-up of celebrity journalism. Elsewhere, earnestness prevails. Apparently, it’s lonely at the top.

Long on authenticity and sympathetic portrayals, a little short on pizzazz.