Actress (Audible Audio Edition) Keith Dixon Virginia Ferguson Semiologic Ltd Books
Download As PDF : Actress (Audible Audio Edition) Keith Dixon Virginia Ferguson Semiologic Ltd Books
As a young actress in a long-running TV show, Mai Rose's career path seemed clear. But she wants more. Already she's dumped the show and landed a role in a serious play, with serious actors and a more-than-serious director. And now another opportunity has arisen - a major fantasy film with a role that seems tailor-made for her.
The only problem being that she's in competition with four other scheming actresses to win the role.
Can she win the part? Does she want to win the part? She has to navigate her way through the demands of the press, the Russian billionaire owner of the newspaper running the competition, boyfriends past and present, her soldier brother and a particularly ambitious (read nasty) competitor.
And all of them underestimate her.
Building towards an enthralling climax, Actress examines one person's struggle to come to terms with who she is, what's important to her and - crucially - what she really wants.
Actress (Audible Audio Edition) Keith Dixon Virginia Ferguson Semiologic Ltd Books
ACTRESS is a successful shift of emphasis for this author who has written three previous Sam Dyke private eye crime fiction novels. It’s a penetrating look mostly at the business and promotional end of acting, on the stage as well as in film and television, and the stress it places on psyches and relationships.20 year old Mai Rose is the focal point; she has had an good role in a tv series, “Amberside Terrace” but feels she is stagnating. As the novel opens, she is rehearsing the role of the young actress, Nina, in Chekhov’s THE SEA GULL. She has already appeared in one film and has another movie opportunity, this time to play the role of Deannah in a film to be based on a best seller. It is a choice part and will make her enormously wealthy, but the selection process is unusual. As part of a media promotion, five leading actresses, all of them young and highly visible stars, are being voted on by the public. The one who receives the most votes will get the leading role.
What the novel is particularly good at is examining the things that appeal to celebrities , “the money, the media appearances, the famous friends, the film premiers . . .” Mai is an intelligent young woman who almost accidentally fell into this world – she was attractive and her acting talent was recognized at age 17 in a national student drama festival. An agent represented her and she’d be the first to admit that she was lucky.
But the money, the media, the friends, and the gala premiers take a heavy toll. A small but telling detail is that she buys two expensive dogs but then finds she has no time for them, so hires a dog-walker who begins to do housekeeping and cooking for her. Mai treats her as she does her dogs - a few pats on the head and shallow perfunctory politeness, all lubricated by money.
Another minor episode in the novel adds depth to this impression. Mai goes to a light-show dance in an converted warehouse and becomes disoriented by the crowd, “a multi-limbed monster, a writhing, groaning behemoth which thrust hands and arms upwards into the light.” This is the public from a star’s perspective, and when Mai does focus on individuals, she sees only bodies wearing day-glo T-shirts or neon makeup. In this kind of business, a person becomes the mask he has assumed.
And Mai has no privacy. One evening she has had too much drink and throws up in public. A young fan is there to record all with her i phone camera. Mai’s companion is there to offer money for the footage, but it’s worth much more by posting it on you-tube. Ironically, instead of being a public-relations disaster, it seems to help her image with the public, as if young women were perversely identifying with her.
Mai is an always interesting and surprising character as she fights against being stereotyped, one of the strengths of the novel. Although she is sometimes confused (as who wouldn’t be?) and has her blind spots, she sees through enough of the hypocrisy and foolishness around to often speak honestly and openly, and ironically, as with the vomiting scene, it adds to her public appeal.
The book moves toward a suspenseful conclusion with the five candidates appearing in a tv special , the one garnering the most votes declared the winner. But to get to this point, Mai has had to navigate her way through a maze of drugs, alcohol, a suicide of a boyfriend,, an unstable Afghan vet brother, and a personally vindictive Helena Cross, her chief rival in the competition.
The novel ends ambiguously with Mai possibly turning in yet another direction. The one constant in Mai’s life has been a restlessness and a growing awareness of the banality of fame. But banal or not, fame includes power and money, and the central struggle of the novel, I think, is how to turn away from them or to try to use them responsibly. Mai has her “serious art”, of course, the Chekhov play, that counterpoints her pop culture star image, but that may not enough to satisfy her. Nothing comes easily in this satisfying novel.
Product details
|
Tags : Amazon.com: Actress (Audible Audio Edition): Keith Dixon, Virginia Ferguson, Semiologic Ltd: Books, ,Keith Dixon, Virginia Ferguson, Semiologic Ltd,Actress,Semiologic Ltd,B01JZVPKGI
People also read other books :
- Thoughts of Love edition by Linda Bevan Owen Cullimore Religion Spirituality eBooks
- The Ultimate Guide to Excel Pivot Tables eBook Ed Caldwell
- I Rantzau Opera in Quattro Atti Italian Edition Pietro Mascagni 9781141155491 Books
- How Do Dinosaurs Learn Colours and Numbers? Jane Yolen 9780007865154 Books
- Miss Greenstone Holiday Mail Order Bride edition by Mercy Levy Religion Spirituality eBooks
Actress (Audible Audio Edition) Keith Dixon Virginia Ferguson Semiologic Ltd Books Reviews
Not awful but not worth my time given that I read slow and it takes a while to get through a book. I don't know why this writer wrote this book. As I understand it, the bulk if his writing falls into police dramas. Why write about the life of a vapid little actress in her vapid little world? I waited for something authentic but the whole narrative felt shallow, like something imagined from the outside based on whatever is on the cover of this week's check out stand reading material. And when we're told that the state of the art ship had a FAX machine, I winced. There is clearly a writer here, but this didn't feel like he was in his element.
Well written and nicely paced, this book presents a brief snippet of the early career of a talented, self-absorbed introvert who, at 22, is already successful in a profession most people fail at. Though not an in depth character study, the novel does present a complex personality fairly convincingly. What struck me most was how essentially alone Mai was even though she had an agent, a good part in a play, a movie and successful television series to her credit. Pushed along by her talent, Mai lets her short fuse jar her into uncompromising behavior, after which she is flooded by self-doubt. I'm not sure how an introvert can perform before millions of people and keep her sanity, but Mai's story shows how talent and an essentially good character can push such a person to persevere to serve her art..
I felt the author carried off this shift of genre incredibly well. We pop into the life of Mai, a young actress who has recently left a popular television show to move her acting career in a different direction. This book delves into the realms of acting we don't often see, the hard work, difficult directors, no privacy and never quite knowing who to trust. She is a believable character, and the characterisation is quite in-depth. We don't always like Mai, and don't always agree with the decisions she makes, but that is part of her humanity. This book in no way glamorises fame and fortune, it's grittier than that, and for that reason, I applaud it. We do get a glimpse of the life of the rich in places, but the story is more about how Mai deals with the choices and issues she faces, and her internal emotions compared to those she tries to portray to the public, sometimes failing to conceal them.
Although I sometimes found myself waiting for something to happen, I would then be surprised by how far through the book I was, and realised that the writing style and flow had kept me engrossed far longer than I expected. This isn't a romance, not a thriller or mystery, not another vapid teen with no life experience bemoaning her life, this is about human emotion and all its faults. This is what makes it so brilliant.
At first I found the main character Mai to be unsympathetic, but as I read I realized such a realistic, uncensored character was more well rounded than most fictitious characters. I downloaded this book when it was on sale, and the title led me to believe that it might be a frothy "chick lit" novel where the main character is rich and famous and can do no wrong. She is the first two, but Mai is believable because she does make mistakes and does stand up for what she believes in, even if it would be damaging to her career or reputation. At first I found her irritating, (she seemed to willfully seek her own destruction) but about halfway through the book I realized she was merely REAL--not an untouchable heroine who always makes the right moves and lives happily ever after. The other characters that could have ended up one dimensional seemed to be well developed as well. All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in well developed characters, a well crafted plot, and a unique setting....whether you care about the lifestyles of the rich and famous or not, this book is captivating enough to keep you reading.
ACTRESS is a successful shift of emphasis for this author who has written three previous Sam Dyke private eye crime fiction novels. It’s a penetrating look mostly at the business and promotional end of acting, on the stage as well as in film and television, and the stress it places on psyches and relationships.
20 year old Mai Rose is the focal point; she has had an good role in a tv series, “Amberside Terrace” but feels she is stagnating. As the novel opens, she is rehearsing the role of the young actress, Nina, in Chekhov’s THE SEA GULL. She has already appeared in one film and has another movie opportunity, this time to play the role of Deannah in a film to be based on a best seller. It is a choice part and will make her enormously wealthy, but the selection process is unusual. As part of a media promotion, five leading actresses, all of them young and highly visible stars, are being voted on by the public. The one who receives the most votes will get the leading role.
What the novel is particularly good at is examining the things that appeal to celebrities , “the money, the media appearances, the famous friends, the film premiers . . .” Mai is an intelligent young woman who almost accidentally fell into this world – she was attractive and her acting talent was recognized at age 17 in a national student drama festival. An agent represented her and she’d be the first to admit that she was lucky.
But the money, the media, the friends, and the gala premiers take a heavy toll. A small but telling detail is that she buys two expensive dogs but then finds she has no time for them, so hires a dog-walker who begins to do housekeeping and cooking for her. Mai treats her as she does her dogs - a few pats on the head and shallow perfunctory politeness, all lubricated by money.
Another minor episode in the novel adds depth to this impression. Mai goes to a light-show dance in an converted warehouse and becomes disoriented by the crowd, “a multi-limbed monster, a writhing, groaning behemoth which thrust hands and arms upwards into the light.” This is the public from a star’s perspective, and when Mai does focus on individuals, she sees only bodies wearing day-glo T-shirts or neon makeup. In this kind of business, a person becomes the mask he has assumed.
And Mai has no privacy. One evening she has had too much drink and throws up in public. A young fan is there to record all with her i phone camera. Mai’s companion is there to offer money for the footage, but it’s worth much more by posting it on you-tube. Ironically, instead of being a public-relations disaster, it seems to help her image with the public, as if young women were perversely identifying with her.
Mai is an always interesting and surprising character as she fights against being stereotyped, one of the strengths of the novel. Although she is sometimes confused (as who wouldn’t be?) and has her blind spots, she sees through enough of the hypocrisy and foolishness around to often speak honestly and openly, and ironically, as with the vomiting scene, it adds to her public appeal.
The book moves toward a suspenseful conclusion with the five candidates appearing in a tv special , the one garnering the most votes declared the winner. But to get to this point, Mai has had to navigate her way through a maze of drugs, alcohol, a suicide of a boyfriend,, an unstable Afghan vet brother, and a personally vindictive Helena Cross, her chief rival in the competition.
The novel ends ambiguously with Mai possibly turning in yet another direction. The one constant in Mai’s life has been a restlessness and a growing awareness of the banality of fame. But banal or not, fame includes power and money, and the central struggle of the novel, I think, is how to turn away from them or to try to use them responsibly. Mai has her “serious art”, of course, the Chekhov play, that counterpoints her pop culture star image, but that may not enough to satisfy her. Nothing comes easily in this satisfying novel.
0 Response to "⋙ Descargar Free Actress (Audible Audio Edition) Keith Dixon Virginia Ferguson Semiologic Ltd Books"
Post a Comment