Pretty Things

by Susan Compo

Booklist called Susan Compo "smart, sassy, and tough,” while Publishers Weekly praised her "witty, unflinching prose.” Following two highly regarded story collections, Susan Compo’s first novel takes a sharp-eyed look at LA's culture industry. Giselle Entwistle has her hands full with her roster of demanding show-business clients. There’s Adon, struggling to make the transition from teen idol to mature star with the aid of a goatee. There’s would-be rock impresario Hedda Hophead, "�aggressive as junk mail and just as relentless.” There’s country singer Len Tingle, whose career has as many ups and downs as his love affair with Giselle; and Tupperware demonstrator extraordinaire Troy Harder, "a living legend in food storage,” who Giselle fears might want to plastic-wrap her. Not to mention child prodigy belter Frances Culligan, who seems to have disappeared. And then there’s Pandra, whose haunting memoir of growing up in suburban Orange County and coming of age in '70s glitter-era Los Angeles (platform boots, Rodney’s English Disco, The Real Don Steele Show, David Bowie clones) forms a book within this book. Giselle hopes to get Pandra’s story published, but it does bring up this little matter of a possible murder in Pandra’s past . . .

204 pages, Paperback

First published May 4, 2001

Reviews

[Paula]

I know the author. We've worked together. Hung out. Fact: She's always been way cooler than me. Somewhere along the line, I tracked down a used copy of "Pretty Things" and added it to this year's summer reading stack.

The characters are not particularly likable, but certainly memorable. They populate the show business sub-culture that has always been part of Los Angeles. There's wordplay aplenty, including a few phrases that really delighted me. A journalist writing about food titled her article "Graze Anatomy." I now wish I had used a highlighter to mark my favorite lines!

[Zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sequel of sorts to Death and Other stories.... not quite but some of the characters are there... I read this in the 90s when it first came out and revisit it now and again like checking in with good friends after reading Ms. Compo's first book.

[Gary Duckworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty Things is a wonderfully written and fun read. It’s the first novel by Susan Compo I’ve read. I had read Earthbound by Susan Compo, a superb telling of the making of The Man Who Fell to Earth movie, that I found so utterly wonderful and truly enlightening. That book told such a great story about the whole movie making business, and had so much information about the film, the people involved, New Mexico.

So I really wanted to read some of Susan’s fiction. I thought I must!

The title, Pretty Things, and the cover conjured up Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, and its influence on David Bowie’s AladdinSane. The title also made me think of The Pretty Things, the 1960s band and their excellent S.F Sorrow and also The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell, by Bowie and Reeves Gabrels from Bowie’s Hours..album at the turn of the century. I didn’t so much think of Oh! You Pretty Things, by Bowie on Hunky Dory…I don’t know why not.

Susan’s Pretty Things Is set in The City Of Angels. So kinda links to the Angels in Waugh’s. Here, we’re in Los Angeles, and its entertainment industry, with an artist manager, Giselle, her life and her clients. But are we? As we’re quickly packed off somewhere else, down a rabbit hole, through to another story, told by and staring one of her clients, Pandra, and set near the end of glam rock, around the time of the release of Bowie’s PinUps album and so the Los Angeles of Rodney Bingenheimer’s - “The Mayor of the Sunset Strip” - English Disco. And watching The 1980 Floor Show on The Midnight Special. Those were different times. (My homage to Lou).

We eventually return back to the present..two of the characters have names especially familiar to Bowie fans, and the story unfolds. It’s full of beautifully crafted sentences and highly original and entertaining miraculous metaphors.

For a book that is copyright 2001, and has its fair share of Bowie references, it’s fun to see the mention the title of a Bowie record from 2015! ‘Another example of how much she is Dogged by Synchronicity’…is so much better way of saying ‘that’s a funny coincidence’.

I think I might give this a second read again some time.