The Paper Wasp by Lauren Acampora

On the face of it this is quite a straightforward tale about Abby and Elise.  Abby has remained home at Michigan, living with her parents and following Elise's burgeoning movie career through magazine interviews and gossip columns.  They used to be close friends but grew apart whilst still in school and with their 10 year reunion looming maybe it is time for Abby to shake of her self-imposed exile and rekindle the flames of friendship.

I got the impression that we are supposed to sympathise with Abby, find her damaged psyche somehow sympathetic.  For me she came across as not only deeply troubled but sociopathic; and that was before I got to any of the more worrying behavioural aspects of her story from when she lands in L.A..  I also found the dream sequences to be unsettling, particularly Abby's insistence that they were all somehow real and that the people in them were interacting with her in reality and not just her dream.

Throw in an unhealthy obsession with a film maker, Auguste Perren, and his bizarre (probably Art House) films that is shared by both women and it does become a very odd story.  When Elise introduces Abby at The Rhizome, a spa retreat created by Perren it becomes almost cult-like.  Shades of Scientology with the meetings with your Guide at The Rhizome to be taken on a dream journey - all very bizarre.

Neither of the main characters are particularly likeable or relatable.  The nearest we get is Elise, at least you can understand that her self-absorbed vacuity is as much a part of the damage caused by her profession and the pressures of even a little peripheral fame.  Ultimately though you can't help but feel that she is, as perceived through Abby's eyes, an empty vessel.  The real winner in the book is the rugged California coastline which the author treats reverentially.

The book takes some odd twists and turns but as the bulk of it is set in Hollywood you find yourself just going with it.  That is until Abby reunites with her estranged sister and then things become completely non-sensical.  I won't go in to detail here as that will spoil the ending of the book but I want to go on record on saying that it is medically ridiculous and made me glad I was almost at the end.

The pacing is slow but necessarily so as the author is trying to give a sense of languid days rekindling a friendship that really both women are only paying homage to, never really regaining that childhood closeness.  It is really about obsession and the lies we well ourselves to feed that obsession.  From a psychological perspective it is an uncomfortable read with characters that I found it difficult to invest in or really understand, let alone like.

An okay read but not one I would really recommend to others.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED FROM THE PUBLISHERS.