The Llama Parlour

by Kathy Lette

When Kat Kennedy, a straight-talker from Australia, wins a walk-on part in a cult Hollywood sitcom, she soon discovers the bizarre side of life there. Nude car washes, jacuzzi orgies, a drug addict heart-throb and a dead body are just a few of the things she has to deal with.

Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit, Humor, Romance

243 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Kathy Lette divides her time between being a full time writer,
demented mother (now there's a tautology) and trying to find a shopping trolley that doesn't have a clubbed wheel.

Kathy first achieved succés de scandale as a teenager with the novel Puberty Blues, now a major motion picture.

After several years as a singer with the Salami Sisters and a newspaper columnist in Sydney and New York (collected in the book "Hit and Ms") and as a television sitcom writer for Columbia Pictures in Los Angeles, her novels, "Puberty Blues" (1979) "Girls Night Out" (1988), "The Llama Parlour" (1991), "Foetal Attraction" (1993), "Mad Cows" (1996),"Altar Ego" (1998) "Nip'N'Tuck" (2001), "Dead Sexy" (2003) and "How To Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints)" (2006) became international best-sellers. Kathy Lette's plays include "Grommits", "Wet Dreams", "Perfect Mismatch" and "I'm So Happy For You I Really Am".

She lives in London with her husband and two children and has just finished a stint as writer in Residence at London's Savoy Hotel.

Kathy says that the best thing about being a writer is that you get to work in your jammies all day, drink heavily on the job and have affairs and call it research! (Although her husband says he should have the affair as it would give her a better book!)

Reviews

[Nicky (burialshroud)]

Embarrassing 90s nonsense.

[Erica Moomin Halliday]

I don't normally write reviews, but in this case I felt compelled to help counteract all the negative ones. I'm really surprised there aren't more positive reviews of this book on here (but then again I am a bit of a weirdo). I really enjoyed it! I picked it up because it was one of the only English books in a bookswap point in an old phone box in Germany, and I loved the 90sness of the cover (it turns out to have a very 90s feel in general, which might annoy some people, but I love that). The blurb on my copy doesn't really sum it up at all...it's about a lot more than love, sex, shallowness etc. (although those are some of the 'themes') - the blurb on here gives a better idea, but still doesn't describe it very well. I found it very, very, very fun! It's a silly, zany romp, kinda farcical, and at times exhaustingly fast-paced, but with a healthy dose of realism, and it made me laugh out loud quite often! I was initially put off by the subject matter of the first chapter, but then gave it another chance when I felt like something 'light', although it surprised me in that respect sometimes too, as it could be quite philosophical, serious and sad (yep, really!). Unlike this review, I thought it was actually really well-written (apart from Abe's accent, which annoyed me, a few offensive quips, and a few typos, at least in my 1991 edition), and it's pretty feminist, too, which is an awesome bonus. I always have a lot of books on the go, and although I'm reading some great stuff, nothing usually holds my attention for very long so I'm constantly switching between them every few chapters. But I was reading this one pretty much non-stop and I got through it a lot quicker than most of my books!

[TwoDrinks]

In a nutshell, I found this book dated and silly. Were we all that daft, vapid and childish in the 90s? I found the main character so wet that I longed to punch her in the ovaries - Ron Burgundy-style - and kept getting annoyed that serious subjects (*gay man has HIV klaxon*, *long-lost child klaxon*) were even included. The book was trying to be light-hearted and serious at the same time and I just found that incongruous. I mean, what's funny about herpes? Bugger all in my opinion. It's with a heavy heart that I wonder if it's possible to be too old for a book.

[amanda]

perhaps in the past you have been tempted to say that a certain book you read was the worst book ever. well, boy were you wrong. this book is without a doubt absolutely the worst book ever. it was so bad that i had to ke ep reading just to assure myself that it wasn´t going to suddenly make a change and redeem itself. and, hey, being the worst just means that you´re the best at being terrible.

[Di McLean]

Kat's in Hollywood to meet a man who doesn't have love bites on his mirror. Nothing special, as long as he has a nice bum, a PhD and wants a loving relationship with bone-marrow-melting sex. Now, is that too much to ask of a billionaire? For Kat, love is in the air...or is it only her car exhaust...


One word - rubbish, never been so disappointed in a book.

[Kristina]

I didn't find this book particularly funny. I didn't buy into the depiction of Hollywood and the characters just didn't work for me.

Halfway through it was a bit like wading through sludge and I almost gave up, however I rarely put a book down unfinished so I persisted but it ddn't get bettter.

[Sasha]

not particularly funny & Kat just got on my nerves

[Ana Ualu]

Not very good, you just want to shake some sense into the main character throughout most of the book.

[Lorelei]

A very odd book for me. A young Aussie goes to Hollywood, told with a great deal of bizarre sex and swearing. Generally well-written, but not really my cup of tea.

[Tory]

“What did I like about him?… I liked the fact that he’d worked out how many years of your life you spend trying to ring someone. He was the only person I knew who wondered if God saw people when He took acid. I liked the way he touched me all the time. I liked the way he wondered why he couldn’t tickle himself. And how could I not like a bloke who’d faked an orgasm with a prostitute because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings?”

I think that I have read something by this author, but I can’t remember. Even if I have read them, and hated them, I have a compulsion to buy authors that I have read. Also, on the cover there is a blurb that says, ‘It cheered me up’ - Salman Rushdie… sounds promising, no?

The quoted bit was the only bit that I even remotely enjoyed… the narrator said things like ‘gi-normous’. Very annoying. And she tried to phonetically write out different accents, which was over the top and annoying as well. Unlike TRAINSPOTTING, where it worked. Not much in this book ‘worked’.

[Valerie F]

Funny chick-lit from a former writer on The Facts of Life. Having been written in the early '90s, some elements are dated, but others are still relevant. A cute satire of California and Hollywood celebutante culture through the eyes of a Australian naif, and I love the Aussie colloqualisms.

[Cingashe Nogaya Motale]

I could not resist the Blurb, Kathy Lette's first intro to me was her list of books to read - so I thought i would try one of her, not disspointing - very funny. My kind of wit.

22/02/11
not too great, bit painful to read - perhaps my mind was not in it...

[Nicole]

didn't enjoy it as much as Foetal Attraction, but it was still an entertaining read.

[Florita]

Why does anyone think she is funny?

[Anna]

Very funny, I like Kathy Lette's humour

[Simon]

Read it to broaden my reading. Task done.

[Sara]

Sad to say but this book does nothing for me. Normally I would keep going and persevere with a bad read but alas with this one I will not bother, really bad.

[Jenine Young]

I wanted to like this book but just couldn't. the characters are so contrived and unlikable. The plot twists were obvious too.

[Ophelia Gold]

So shocked that I didn't enjoy this book. The main character was was very deluded and the main man was an ass hole to say the least. It also ended in a strange place where the story was kind of left in the middle of nowhere where nothing had been resolved. Very shocked I didn't love this as I have loved all of Kathy's work so far but this definitely wasn't her best work.

[Kyra James]

i only kept reading this terrible book because every time i finished a chapter, i thought, "surely, surely it must get better?"
by the end of it i really wasn't expecting anything anymore, but it sort of looked up at the last two chapters, so it gets a star more than i was going to give it.

[Jimmy Hall]

Some funny lines. Far too much drongo.

[H Simpson]

https://bemusicandbooks.wordpress.com...

[Becca Madden]

Can we bring back the word pukesvile?

Pierce is the worst but Tasha is a slay.

[Sandra]

from my Picador box set of 10