Comedy Writer, The

Hooray for Hollywood? Maybe not. At least not if Peter Farrelly's searingly funny novel is even remotely accurate. Farrelly is a screenwriter and director himself, so the story of aspiring movie scribe Henry Halloran has a scarily authentic feel. When he gives up his job as a salesman in Boston and heads out west to polish and peddle the script he based on a recent breakup, Henry tumbles into a world of bizarre quasi celebrities, breathtakingly unprincipled producers, surgically enhanced starlets, and plain ordinary lunatics. The result is basically an unrelenting nightmare, guest-starring his uninvited roommate, the sister of a woman whose suicide he failed to prevent. Farrelly's master stroke in The Comedy Writer is making Henry as unsympathetic as most of the characters he runs into. This is not the story of a wide-eyed innocent thrown to the Hollywood sharks but of a bitter, frequently nasty hypochondriac who bites off more than he can chew and gradually realizes that almost anything is better than Hollywood's version of success. It's the kind of book that makes you want to take a shower, but you'll still be chuckling as you soap up. --Simon Leake