Tell-All

Chuck Palahniuk

Language: English

Publisher: Anchor

Published: Jan 1, 2010

Description:

The hyperactive love child of Page Six and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? caught in a tawdry love triangle with The Fan. Even Kitty Kelly will blush.

Soaked, nay, marinated in the world of vintage Hollywood, Tell-All is a Sunset Boulevard -inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost; a veritable Tourette's syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list; and a merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman 's habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond.

Our Thelma Ritter -ish narrator is Hazie Coogan , who for decades has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine 'Miss Kathie' Kenton - veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III , who worms his way into Miss Kathie's heart (and boudoir). Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity tell-all memoir foretelling Miss Kathie's death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman -penned musical extravaganza; as the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans - and for posterity.

Tell-All is funny, subversive, and fascinatingly clever. It's wild, it's wicked, it's bold-faced - it's vintage Chuck.