Plus One
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
“Plus One is a smart and funny novel about Hollywood, but where it truly shines is in Noxon's stunning and painfully accurate depiction of the complex rhythms and growing pains of a marriage.” — Jonathan Tropper, author of This Is Where I Leave You and One Last Thing Before I Go
"Well observed, honest, and laugh-out-loud funny, Plus One tells a story from the inside of show business about being on the outside."— Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men
Christopher Noxon's debut novel Plus One is a comedic take on bread-winning women and caretaking men in contemporary Los Angeles. Alex Sherman-Zicklin is a mid-level marketing executive whose wife's fourteenth attempt at a TV pilot is produced, ordered to series, and awarded an Emmy. Overnight, she's sucked into a mad show-business vortex and he's tasked with managing their new high-profile Hollywood lifestyle. He falls in with a posse of Plus Ones, men who are married to women whose success, income, and public recognition far surpasses their own. What will it take for him to regain the foreground in his own life?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his first novel, journalist Noxon, the husband of TV writer-producer Jenji Kohan (Weeds, Orange Is the New Black) doesn't stray far from his own experience in writing about Alex Sherman-Zicklin, a former marketing executive (last campaign: soystrami) whose wife, Figgy, is the creator of the hit TV series, Tricks, about a suburban housewife who runs a prostitution ring out of a scrapbooking shop (sound familiar?). Alex stays home to take care of their two young children and accompany his more successful wife to various industry functions. His descent into Hollywood marriage purgatory begins when Figgy wins an Emmy and has a "Swank moment," forgetting to thank him in her acceptance speech. A rat sighting in their home sends Alex into the byzantine world of L.A. residential real estate. To complicate matters, Alex worries that Figgy might be having an affair with Zev, her Israeli director of photography. The last blow, though, comes when Alex finds out that Figgy has gone off the pill and wants another child. His response sets off a climactic marital crisis. Noxon (Rejuvenile) channels the '80s semi-classic, Mr. Mom, with a Hollywood makeover. But despite some deft observations about the L.A. parenting scene, Alex's story seems inconsequential.