Review: How I Became a Famous Novelist
Steve Hely's Debut Novel is a Merciless Take on Publishing
How I Became a Famous Novelist has been hailed as a work of comic genius. "I want to climb onto the roof of every bookstore in the country, throwing copies of [the book] at people and screaming 'READ THIS BOOK!' through a megapowered bullhorn," gushes author Ted Easkey in an endorsement.
It's easy to see why an author would feel this way. The book sends up virtually every convention of the novel writing, publishing and promoting trade. In a take-no-prisoners approach, Hely tells a story about a man who sets out to become a famous novelist – for pretty much all the wrong reasons.
The Set-up
The hero, Pete Tarslaw, loses his job and is dumped by his girlfriend, Polly, who gets engaged to another man. Meanwhile, Pete sees famous authors getting all the girls, living it up in mansions and beach houses. All for writing books and not even very good ones.
One author, in particular, gets under his skin – Preston Brooks, an aged, wood-whittling philosophical type, who writes books with titles like Kindness to Birds and The Widows' Breakfast. Pete thinks his books are treacle and views writing and publishing as a scam. After scanning the bestseller lists and coming up with a set of how-to rules, such as "Prose should be lyrical" and "Include scenes in as many reader-filled towns as possible," Pete sets out methodically to write his bestseller, a literary novel called The Tornado Ashes Club. This book manages to cobble together every plot device and gimmick Pete's rules specify.
And while Pete's working on his novel, he imagines his success dealing payback to Polly and her fiance. While anticipating the acclaim he'll receive, Pete gleefully pictures Polly "in some D.C. apartment with her hair in curlers, nagging her unfortunate shrivel-testicled husband to put the kettle on."
The Hero's Rise and Fall
The story follows Pete's meteoric (if highly unlikely) rise to bestselling author status, which leads to interesting encounters with fellow authors and others in the business. Ultimately, Pete grants a televised interview in which he makes his real agenda clear and calls Preston Brooks a fraud. This complication, along with a subplot involving a shady investment scheme Pete blunders into, leads up to an unexpectedly serious and even moving conclusion – one that redeems Pete, his fellow authors and the publishing business.
Dead-on Accuracy and Clever Prose
Exploring all the cliches of the writer's life and parodying every aspect of publishing with dead-on accuracy and clever prose, Hely has written a novel that will have other novelists chuckling and nodding their heads in agreement. For those who've never written a novel, but would like to, this book will not only amuse, but provide a cautionary tale. Because, for fiction, it comes mighty close to telling the whole horrible truth.
How I Became a Famous Novelist Grove Press, Black Cat (July 8, 2009), ISBN: 978-0-8021-7060-6
Brilliant Satirical Novel
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