Based on a True Story
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
'...a seriously funny book.' National Post
'...by turns hilarious and dark, always riveting, and crammed with satirical observations.' Free Press
I threw in a coin and I closed my eyes and I thought, I hope I've got enough Valium to see me through the week. One of the other mums chucked her coin in, and turned to me. She said, 'Do you think there will ever come a day when we'll make a wish that's about ourselves, and not about our kids?'
A celebrity who's more notorious for her excesses than her famous roles. Her former lover, who's threatening to reveal the truth behind her bestselling autobiography. Her long-lost son, who's escaped from the train wreck of his mother's life and doesn't want to be found.
Absolutely Fabulous meets The Devil Wears Prada in this delicious and addictive novel about a washed-out soap opera diva, her lifetime of secrets, and the innocent young journalist who gets caught in her wake.
Augusta Price (not her real name) is famous for playing a slatternly barmaid on a popular soap opera and for falling down drunk in public. Now, just out of rehab, with no job, no relationship, and a sad shortage of tranquilizers, she is surprised to find that her 'tell all' memoir has become an improbable hit. But how to stop the real truth from being revealed - and how to make up for a long history of neglecting those she really loves?
A funny, poignant and intoxicating novel about fame, love, deception and consequences - about the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves.
'A hell of a lot of fun...made me laugh so hard I cried.' Globe and Mail
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Augusta Price is a pill-popping middle-aged has-been with a boozy diva's primal thirst for drama. With her life and TV career in shambles, she's more prone than usual to go off the rails. Elsewhere in London is Frances Bleeker, a shy Californian whose journalism career in the British capital has recently tanked. Fortunately, her newspaper interview with Augusta leads to a gig ghost writing the actress's tell-all memoir and a bumpy trip to L.A. where figures from both women's pasts lurk. From the opening sentence of her debut ("It was not the first time she'd been asked to leave a clinic"), newspaper columnist Renzetti strives to signal a lightweight but outrageous comedy, somewhere between the Stoli-fuelled antics of the BBC's Absolutely Fabulous and the caustic black wit of Edward St. Aubyn. It's hit and miss; shopworn ridicule of Californians, a series of slurred drunken scenes, and pratfalls ensue. The story has an out-of-place redemption arc, and the sentimentality tends to domesticate and declaw what would have been a scandalous premise. Peppered liberally with zingers courtesy of Augusta, the result is a comedy that's sporadically funny, but no more edgy than a television sitcom on a major network.
