In small-town Michigan, Abby Graven leads a solitary life. Once a bright student on the cusp of a promising art career, she now languishes in her childhood home, trudging to and from her job as a supermarket cashier. Each day she is taunted from the magazine racks by the success of her former best friend Elise, a rising Hollywood starlet whose life in pictures Abby obsessively scrapbooks. At night Abby escapes through the films of her favourite director, Auguste Perren, a cult figure known for his creative institute the Rhizome. Inspired by Perren, Abby draws fantastical storyboards based on her often premonitory dreams, a visionary gift she keeps hidden.
When Abby encounters Elise again at their high school reunion, she is surprised and warmed that Elise still considers her not only a friend but a brilliant storyteller and true artist. Elise's unexpected faith in Abby reignites in her a dormant hunger, and when Elise offhandedly tells Abby to look her up if she's ever in LA, Abby soon arrives on her doorstep. There, Abby discovers that although Elise is flourishing professionally, behind her glossy magazine veneer she is lonely and disillusioned. Ever the supportive friend, Abby becomes enmeshed in Elise's world, even as she guards her own dark secret and burning desire for greatness. As she edges closer to Elise, the Rhizome, and her own artistic ambitions, the dynamic shifts between the two friends-until Abby can see only one way to grasp the future that awaits her.
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[I WORE red capris on the plane]***
(Riverrun, 13 June 2019, 304 pages, paperback, copy from @AmazonUK via #AmazonVine)
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After a strong start, this book became a bit of a hit and a miss. There are some things that work really well and other things that just miss the mark. This made the book a bit uneven and less satisfying. The book is well written. I liked the fact Abby is clearly unstable and obsessed with Elise. This is evident from the start and her obsession just gets worse and darker as the book goes on. Elise is far too nice to Abby when she just turns up outside her house in LA expecting to shoehorn her way into Elise's life. I'd have sent her packing. However, Abby's obsession isn't sustained for the whole book and after a hundred or so pages I got tired of her. Her obsession and actions aren't enough to carry the whole book. There are some elements of the plot that got me excited but are never fully developed such as the weird happyish cult Institute. This never goes anywhere and I thought this was one of the highlights of the book. Plot elements such as Abby's obsession are stretched beyond the point of interest and genuine intriguing plot elements are allowed to fall flat. There is some good stuff here but it's not developed the way it should and what is developed only works some of the time.
