Lovers of fairy tales, E! True Hollywood Story, and Vh1 rejoice: Jennifer Banash has penned the novel version of the television specials that keep us glued to our TV sets night after night after night. Hell, I’m one of them. Lord knows how many tapes I have filled up of Behind the Music specials (especially Fleetwood Mac’s, Milli Vanilli’s, and Leif Garrett’s) and or even how many times I’ve watched that stupid Jackson family movie, An American Dream. Point is, for some reason, many of us are drawn to the lives of Hollywood stars. We want to know how hard the Pam Andersons and the Marilyn Monroes worked to get where they were. Sometimes just as much, we want to know about all the sex and drugs that go along with it. And how they fall. We love that, too.

In Hollywoodland, Banash has created the catch-all character Sierra, the smalltown girl who embodies idyllic Hollywood beauty and heads out west to make it big. While Banash has made sure that the girl knows how to coyly flash a grin and sway her hips to get ahead, she has also given her the thing that most E! specials only hint at: insecurity. Most specials will show you a five-second clip of an interview with a hot girl who shyly tells the camera how nervous she was about her first audition and what a dork she was in high school (neither of which are ever, ever believeable). Here, Banash has Sierra throwing back pills every ten minutes, begging every person around her for encouragement, trying to find something within her that makes her her. Sierra is painted as a naive girl, one who truly does not understand the way the world works. She thinks she understands how to get ahead in the world, but Banash also makes sure that she expects the best in people. Many times, Sierra is hurt because she doesn’t see their cruelty, even after the harmful act is complete. But she’s young; she won’t see it. It’s actually quite devastating.

Understand, this novel may sound somewhat typical, but it is quite the undertaking. Banash details, excrutiatingly, Sharlene Miller’s rise and fall as Sierra, from childhood to her death at the age of 21. Modeling, porn, B-movies, Darren Star, it’s all here. At the same time, Banash also compares each of Sharlene’s thoughts, choices, and actions to an event in a classic fairy tale. Between those sections, Banash also squeezes in personal accounts of the people closest to Sierra, her boyfriends, hairdressers, producers, even girlfriends. Among those sections are also scenes in which Sierra hallucinates that she is still working on movie sets even though she is in a coma.

Obviously, it takes quite the writer to handle such a complex structure. And Banash certainly handles it well. Sure, the language can be a tad melodramatic at times, but the novel is a fairy tale, and her protaganist is a whiny teenager strung out on pills and cocaine. And yes, the writer’s inclusion of song lyrics to describe how Sierra feels is a bit lazy, but it is a rare occurrence.

The only place I truly take issue with this novel is with Sierra’s relationship with a certain president of the United States. This particular president is an unnamed sax-playing womanizer with a southern drawl, but it’s fairly obvious on whom this president is modeled. It’s not that I mind that an actress would have a romance with a president, actual or fictitious, it’s that the writer would choose to reenact the all-too-famous cigar scene. While this particular scene is devastating, as Sierra has lofty expectations that cannot possibly be met, and seeing those still remain high is rather heartbreaking, reenacting the cigar scene seems needless and cheap. It seems that this president is a bit nastier and crueler than the model president, and Sierra gets into a lot of trouble. When Sierra decides to come forward, she is mysteriously blackballed from Hollywood. I understand that the plot needed a reason for Sierra to be outcasted, but complicated sex scenes could have occurred without the cigar.

For the most part, Hollywoodland is largely successful. The book gives life to a tale we’ve watched hundreds of times and for some reason, never tire of. It’s pretty remarkable the amount of girls who head out west all the time who think that they are going to be the next face to make it big, when in reality, they’ll more than likely the next face to be in some creepy producer’s crotch. And we’ll watch every single one of them fall, too.

Buy Hollywoodland and check out other books at Impetus Press.