Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your time or your money! It's just dreadful.
Review: This is a very appealing short book. It may be Dori Carter's first novel but certainly won't be her last. She confirms,in very clear and humorous prose, what any thinking person knows: the power players in Hollywood fail miserably when it comes to being human. You will not put this book down and wonder what the author was trying to say. She is clear, she is funny, she has a very sharp knife and wields it well. I'd run to get this book before it sells out.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Stuff!!
Review: This is a very appealing short book. It may be Dori Carter's first novel but certainly won't be her last. She confirms,in very clear and humorous prose, what any thinking person knows: the power players in Hollywood fail miserably when it comes to being human. You will not put this book down and wonder what the author was trying to say. She is clear, she is funny, she has a very sharp knife and wields it well. I'd run to get this book before it sells out.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Choice of Title Robs Fine Novel of Fifth Star
Review: Titles matter, and it is a great shame that Dori Carter went with this title for her book. The title is just too clever by half. It will mislead and misdirect readers. This book is about neither Beautiful WASPs nor sex.Instead, what we have here is a wonderful novel about one of the most significant manifestations of the Jewish presence in America, namely the Jews who work in Hollywood as screenwriters, agents, and producers. It shows how they take their own experience of life (which is clearly drawn upon their own experiences as Jews in America, and more distantly on their knowledge of the history of the treatment of Jews within gentile cultures) and transform it into something understandable to the American public, especially that public between the two coasts which must be pleased to make a movie that is a success. To this end they create an idealized culture of the Beautiful WASP which they use in these movies as a mirror to reflect back onto the mainstream of American life not what is, but rather what is dreamed of. Dori Carter has written a book which is, I think, an insightful exploration of this aspect of the Jewish experience in America. She can be laugh-out-loud funny as she lampoons the utterly superficial world of Hollywood and its creations. And yet at the same time she has written a book which is a serious exploration of the question of how this unique group can and does relate to the broader American culture within which it dwells. I read in a review that this was a book about "self-hating Jews" presumably because these characters try so desperately hard to mask who they are. I do not agree with this statement. A closer reading of the novel shows the narrator coming to understand and appreciate the world she remains a part of, no matter what the superificial surroundings. I hope that both Jewish and non-Jewish readers will not be put off by the novel's awful title and will instead let themselves enter a fascinating world which is portrayed faithfully with humor, pathos, and great understanding.
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