THE LONELY LADY by Harold Robbins is another paperback I’d picked up from a library sale. It’s, I think, the 5th novel of his I've read in the past year or two and for sheer guilty pleasure it ranks second to The Carpetbaggers in enjoyment. Absent from this novel are the long passages of endless talk that marred THE BETSY and THE INHERITORS. This novel is just as dialog driven as those novels are, but where this novel edges them out is that the dialog drives the story instead of just talk filling pages. If I were teaching a class in Commercial Fiction, I think I’d put THE CARPETBAGGERS, or THE LONELY LADY, on the syllabus and force all those earnest young English majors out there to check their lit-soaked baggage at the door and learn how a master did it. Not how to write well, but how to write something that sells well.Take this little nugget of dialog:“What’s she look like?” he echoed. “She’s sensational. Stacked like you would not believe, but very classy. Sort of a combination Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly. She’s the kind who when she comes into your office you want to bend down and kiss her pussy out of sheer reverence. So send me the script and I’ll get on it right away.”And that's a PG-13 sample of what's in store for the forgiving reader!Yes, the novel is loaded with literary sins like shifting POVs and awkward transitions in time, characters introduced to be dropped without explanation. But if you’re reading a book like this, you’re not looking for something deep to sink your teeth into, you’re looking for something that has no more nutritional value then edible underwear. This novel is proof that the reading public in the 1970s must have been one collective kinky headcase.Lucky for me, and the rest of us who like this stuff, there is plenty more where this came from.
What a Debbie Downer of a book. I've heard of going to the School of Hard Knocks, but this woman never graduates! Even to the last page, JeriLee is in misery, and frankly, so was I. From the beginning there's a big chunk of the book where nothing really happens. Just JeriLee trying to understand and deal with her raging hormones. (We've all been there, eh?) When something finally does happen, it's all downhill from there. JeriLee just bounces around from one failure to another. I don't think she knows what she wants, or at least I don't know what she wants. She thinks she wants to be a writer, but does she really? I never connected with the lead character. She wasn't a likeable person, yet had all these people falling in love with her. Towards the end of the book it became a chore for me to keep reading her story.
What do You think about The Lonely Lady (2015)?
First part has some rapey-shamey content, then it went downhill. For the tl;dr folks: it's about a girl who aspires to be a famous writer and apparently has to have sex with everybody and his wife in order to get famous. Maybe that's why I'm not famous - I keep it in my pants.I had trouble, also, believing that writers have that much power in Hollywood. JeriLee's husband is supposedly this super-famous playwright/screenwriter who appears to have enough clout in the business that people treat him like a producer. Maybe if the guy produced his own work I'd believe the characterization better. I'd read that Robbins based JeriLee on Jackie Susann (actress turned writer), but I doubted Jackie had to blow half of Cali to get Valley of the Dolls onscreen.Trash, and not even good trash.
—Kathryn
This book made me think and just reflect on the story that way presented to me. The book was unreal, amazing, and left me in awe! This seems like a story that can actually happen in a person's life so easily. JerriLee was a character with real substance that shows how the world really is. I saw something in the character that I rarely find in other stories. Her story was one of dreams, pain, rejection, danger, and feminist quality that really puts my mind in a new perspective like a switch of a dial on a machine!!!! I found a piece of myself in JerriLee that makes me wonder about how I think and feel. This book is....indescribable.
—Ashley Vinson
Hey there--I quite agree that THE LONELY LADY is way better than GOODBYE, JANETTE. But I still dig it somehow. Like I said, this one is wacked. I couldn't help but smile at all of the silliness. He rarely uses women protagonists. Besides those two titles and 79 PARK AVENUE I think that's it. But the way he treats them... Talk about being wacked.
—Martin
