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    Arts & Entertainments: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Arts & Entertainments: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Arts & Entertainments: A Novel
    Ebook291 pages4 hours

    Arts & Entertainments: A Novel

    By Christopher Beha

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Christopher Beha delivers a cutting send-up of our cultural obsession with celebrity—a deliciously witty, and ultimately tender, novel about the absurdity of fame and the complexity of love sure to appeal to fans of Maria Semple and Jess Walter.

    A sharp-edged satire with heart, Arts & Entertainments is the story of Handsome Eddie Hartley who, at thirty-three, has forgone dreams of an acting career for the reality of life as a drama teacher at a boys’ prep school. But when Eddie and his wife, Susan, discover they cannot have children, it is one disappointment too many.

    Weighted down with debt, his wife’s mounting unhappiness, and his own deepening sense of failure, Eddie is confronted with an alluring solution when an old friend-turned-web-impresario suggests Eddie sell a sex tape he made with an ex-girlfriend, now a wildly popular television star. Overcoming his initial moral qualms, Eddie figures that in an era when any publicity is good publicity, the tape won’t cause any harm—a decision that will have disastrous consequences and propel him straight into the glaring spotlight he once thought he craved.

    A hilariously biting and incisive take-down of our culture’s monstrous obsession with fame, Arts & Entertainments is also a poignant and humane portrait of a young man’s belated coming-of-age, the complications of love, and the surprising ways in which the most meaningful lives often turn out to be the ones we least expected to lead.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9780062322470
    Unavailable
    Arts & Entertainments: A Novel

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    Reviews for Arts & Entertainments

    3/5

    21 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      If it is true that reality TV is in its death throes, I can only hope that this ridiculously plotted, amusing book is found guilty. Handsome Eddie is a failed actor whose wife is pushing for in vitro fertilization which they cannot afford. He teaches theatre at the same Catholic school that he attended. His actress ex-girlfriend has a very successful TV show and Eddie agrees to furnish a scuzzy reality TV producer with a sex tape featuring her, taken from old videos he had always intended to throw away. Eddie is fired from his job, and when his wife Susan becomes pregnant with triplets, they are both sucked into reality TV as active participants. Mostly satire, but the novel so convincingly demonstrates the seductive capabilities of fame, wealth, and overall bad judgment, that the reader wonders if resistance isn't futile after all. As the absurdity ratchets up, one hopes for relief but stand by, it gets worse. An enjoyable and clever farce.
    • 4/5
      A funny, but scathing novel about the impact of celebrity, social media, and reality programming. A very good first effort, with parts that make you cringe, parts that frustrate, and parts that make you laugh and/or cry. Is there life if there is no audience to observe it?
    • 4/5
      A perfect summer book to read about reality television. Unfortunately while the book is fiction it may as well be a documentary of TV, social media, and celebrity in 2014, and was completely believable. The book is well written and quite funny.