Hugo Best, age 68, is a late night TV talk show host - think Leno or Letterman - who is retiring (or was he pushed out?) from his TV gig after a twenty-five year run of his mostly successful television show.
June Bloom, age 29, is a lowly writers' assistant on the show who now finds herself out of a job. She is also the first person narrator of the book.
After a party celebrating the end of the show, Hugo impulsively asks June to spend the upcoming Memorial Day weekend at his palatial home in Greenwich, CT. June just as impulsively accepts not knowing why she was invited, what will be expected of her, although she has her suspicions, or what the possible outcome of the visit might mean to her.
This novel was reviewed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a few weeks ago, and while it is not the usual type of book that I read, the review intrigued me enough to head on to the library and check it out. I wish I could say that I loved the book and the story, but, alas, I found it to be a rather annoying story about a bunch of annoying people, and I found that for the last half of the book, I was reading it just so I could be done with it. I was glad that it was only 265 pages long, although I will say that despite all of the annoying people, I did want to stick with it to see how it ended.
Oh, and speaking of annoying, wasn't it annoying that I used the word "annoying" three times in the last two sentences of the preceding paragraph? (That's a rhetorical question, folks.) I did that deliberately, in case you were wondering.
In its defense, the book did have a few interesting insights into the character of both a show biz success/legend, Hugo, and that of a struggling barely-making-it-in-show-biz person, June. But in the end, I found myself not really caring about either one of them.
One and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.
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