Heather H. Howard

When people have so much money that they move in circles where employees have to pick up the panties discarded on the floor by some one night stand or other, they tend to lose touch with reality. Money really can buy you almost everything you desire, including a gun range and armory in the basement accessed through a secret bedroom door for ... which Hollywood star? There are clues, but you have to guess. The louche lifestyles, endless one night stands, paranoia that requires a steel fortress room to hide in, people to pick up your handbag and carry it across the room (shades of the late Queen Mother here). These people have entourages called 'my people' and this book is by one of them.

It's obvious that money can't buy you happiness or sanity, although it can buy you lots of people who will tell you how wonderful you are or give you endless therapy just in case you don't believe them. However laughable and contemptible this seems, I have to say if someone hands me over a fortune (large or small, let's not be too picky about this) I will take it and I will try to be the exception and, as the Lottery winners say, 'not change'.

And if I do, and I end up with a celebrity personal assistant like the author, then I will thoroughly deserve to end up being exposed and mocked, as in this rather enjoyable and entertaining book.

The book is officially fiction, but the author really was a celebrity personal assistant and it was quite fun trying to guess who the stars were. Some are even identified by name. If you can identify them all, you have been reading the National Enquirer and watching showbiz programmes far too much!

Recommended for that hour when getting a pedi and manicure or a short plane flight to absolutely nowhere very important.
… (meer)

The cover of "Chore Whore" claims that "This novel is 98% true!" Whether the percentage is accurate or not, the lightly fictionalized tale of a harried celebrity personal assistant in Hollywood is amusing, if not terrifying. And it is likely that most is true, author Heather Howard was a personal assistant for over 20 years in Hollywood.

The novel focuses on the demanding life of Corki Brown, celebrity assistant to some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including Lucy Bennett (an Oscar-winning actress) and Jock Straupman (an actor who is always bedding another young woman). Balancing the insane demands of the stars, including their last minute gift-giving binges and parties, with life as a single mother to her 10-year-old son Blaise, who has begun acting up in school, Corki is perpetually short on time, short on money, and (in her pithy commentary) short on patience.

There's not a lot of narrative arc to the story, aside from worries about lost income when the stars go overseas to shoot, seemingly all at once, and the adolescent acting-out of Blaise. Instead, the book careens from one unbelievable story to the next, cataloguing a series of self-indulgent and outrageous requests, petty squabbles, and absurd romantic relationships (among the stars, rather than involving Corki).

The book is entertaining, sometimes in a way similar to slowing down to look at a traffic accident. It is engagingly written, and easy to read. Unfortunately, it was so easy to read I often multi-tasked and did other things while I read the book; sometimes I even watched TV while reading.… (meer)