About book Comment Je Suis Devenu Un Écrivain Célèbre (2011)
A funny, fictional parody of the state of books today. Hely makes an implied connection to movies - that they are simply genre pieces without any true story and that anyone can be a famous novelist by putting the right pieces together. Lost some steam at the end, in my opinion, and I felt like the nature of the character changed in a less than believable way, so four stars. But still well worth the read. After reading one disappointing bestseller after another, many readers might ask "Why not only such trashy book could ever get published, and also selling like crazy? ". In that sense, Mr. Hely's book might help to offer some insight into why some books manage to become bestsellers(in some cases, despite of poor quality and cliches); and why some books still managed to be sold-off despite poor remarks from critics. In his highly humorous works of satire, Mr Hely created a wannabe bestseller author, who wrote his novel by throwing all of the formulaic so-called 'elements for bestseller' (e.g. historical reference of the Civil War, family history, mention of foreign landscapes, mention of different foreign dishes etc) into his would-be bestseller. Not only his writing progress is humorous enough, plus there are also a lot of jokes on the book critics. The narrator complained bitterly that "What kind of miserable lowlife would make a living out of telling people how bad a book is?" after his novel received horrible remarks. Readers would definitely gain a good amount of LOLs from this book.
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Another rare gem in the comedic genre. At times, I forgot I was reading a book of fiction!
—blackfallingcomet
"Fiction as the continuance of a shared illusion."
—cowles143
