Tell All by Chck Palahnuik

I recently read Tell All by Chck Palahnuik. It was pretty good. A compelling read, it was a book where you always want to find out what's next.

The book is the story of the aging movie star Katherine Kenton. Kenton is from the old Grace Kelly/Joan Crawford Hollywood era. It's told from the perspective of her long time live-in companion Hazie Coogan. Hazie has made it her life's work to guide Katherine to success and avoid career, financial and relationship disasters along the way for Katherine as best she can.

Per the title, it's a book about "tell all" books. Using Crawford and Mommie Dearest as the posthumous pitfall that Hazie is trying to avoid. The catch about these tell all revelation books is that the subject must be dead for the tell all to be published. That creates some pressure on Katherine as she meets a charming young gold digger named Webster Carlton Westward III. The book itself is laid out as a kind of screenplay/script with chapter titles like "ACT I, SCENE EIGHT"

Typical of Palahnuik there are crazy twists. Also as in Survivor, the author explores celebrity and some of the manufactured steps taken to maintain a certain public look and image. There's the same kind of cynicism in parts of the arbitrariness and managed element of fame.

It's a good book. A fast read. I still have a few Palahniuk to read and I will continue reading them.