Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins
We all know Jackie Collins. She’s up there with Jilly Cooper, and writes about the people who fascinate us: Hollywood celebrities. Ahh, celebrities – fascinating, mysterious and hailed as the leading lights of each successive generation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as taken in as the next person, but let’s be honest about it.
This is the original bestseller, not ‘The New Generation’ published in 2001. This one was published in 1983, pre-dating our modern celebrity culture, ambitions and expectations – well, I thought so anyway. I’m not sure if it’s reassuring or depressing to think attitudes 25 years ago are actually the same as now. We haven’t changed much at all. At the centre of the book is a movie being put together. The main characters are connected like a Facebook trail and everyone has the skinny on someone. Some are rich and famous, some rich but not famous, some famous but not rich. No one is quite satisfied. Everyone wants more: more money, more fame, more influence, more sex.
You have the writer, director and producer. Then there are the actors, their agents, their angles and what they’ll all do to get the part. Then come the politics, affairs and revenge. Then the secret pregnancies, backroom deals, blackmail, paparazzi – this book seriously has everything!
The style of writing, which looks slightly dated now, must have been mind-blowingly blasé at the time:
‘He had noticed that Karen was not too thrilled by the missionary position. He liked it himself, it gave him somewhere to rest his bones when he needed a break.’
A 21st century reader would almost skip over this line. For an early 80s reader, it must have been scandalous and, I imagine, quite liberating. Make your heart beat faster stuff. Sure there were books with sex scenes and bad language, but never quite so successful. Hollywood Wives was a New York Times #1 bestseller – it was out there in family homes, handbags and bedside drawers all over the world. All that sex, drugs and rock n roll, mashed up with Hollywood politics, a rags-to-riches story and a serial killer – what a lethal combination.
It’s pithy, fast-paced and in-your-face. I can be quite picky about books, even though I’ll try anything once, and I liked this book. Read it if you like Mills and Boon, E! TV celebrity documentaries or can smile at your own reading choices. Don’t read it if you’re after a world-changing Man Booker Prize winner.
| Title: Hollywood Wives |
| Author: Jackie Collins |
| Format: Paperback, 544 pages |
| Publisher: Pan Macmillan |
