The Hills starlet Lauren Conrad is many, many things. Reality TV star. Fashion designer. Clotheshorse. Vaguely conscious human being. And now, you can throw novelist in there! That’s right! With her mighty pen, Lauren Conrad has managed to instantly earn a place right next to Joseph Conrad in your bookstore! Heart of Darkness, meet L.A. Candy! Wow, did you hear that? That was the sound of millions of English professors everywhere getting terrible stomach cramps.
L.A. Candy follows the adventures of Jane & Scarlett, best friends (one blonde! one brunette!) that find themselves recruited by a producer to star in a ”reality version of Sex and the City“. They go to parties, have feuds with the other catty girls on the show, meet douchebags in clubs. And if you can’t tell already, the book is an extreeeeemely thinly veiled retelling of everything that’s happened to actual Lauren Conrad since her rise to dubious fame. The online excerpts are just loaded with literary gravitas and dripping with details. Here is Jane/Lauren describing her chaotic life immediately after her move to Los Angeles.:
…she’d been living under what her father called “battlefield conditions”: ripping open boxes at the last minute when she needed something, like her favorite blue bikini or her blender for making strawberry-banana smoothies.
Interestingly enough, bikinis and blenders are also pretty important motifs in the works of James Joyce. Also come on! Most of us girls unpack the bikinis and small appliances immediately after moving, right?
Here is another riveting Jane/Lauren moment, as she describes walking into her boss’ office at her internship, where the TV crew has already set up:
As she stepped into Fiona’s office, Jane looked around. Two metal stands securing large lights flanked Fiona’s desk. The intensity of the lights was muted by wide sheets of what looked like tracing paper wrapped around the fixtures and held in place by wooden clothespins. The same kind of paper had been taped over one of the tall windows. The result was an overall softening of the lighting in the room.”
Is she really using a paragraph to describe light stands? Lauren must stand around on sets, mesmerized by the gaffers, with their many gels and C-stands?
I loved this piece of interior dialogue was on page 2:
“In any case, WTF was this guy doing in her bed?”
Yes, yes yes, calm down. I can hear you shouting “Unfair! Unfair!” I know, she didn’t set out in life to be a novelist, and it’s clearly unfair to judge her against Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, or even the likes of Gigi Levangie Grazer. In fact, you will find this breezy read filed away in the Young Adult section of your local bookstore, so it’s clearly meant for the Teen Vogue demographic, not Atlantic Monthly readers. But hey, if you’re a fan of the show, you should read it! You will recognize everyone from Audrina to Justin Bobby to everyone’s favorite lil’ stinker, Heidi. It’s 336 pages, and hell, the font is pretty big.
a novel? huh. i mean, i could understand a “saucy tell-all” or something, but a novel? especially one as thinly veiled as this?
i dunno, kind of weird
She has a 3 book deal, folks. More LA drama to come.
I just read it, and though at first it seemed like all of her characters seemed like people from the Hills, by the end of it, I couldn’t see any likeness or think “Oh this is just LC talking about her life” at all.
It wasn’t Stephen King, but I don’t think it was some celebrity trying their hand at something they don’t understand. If she really did write this without a ghostwriter or whatever, then kudos. Girl’s gotta a gift (other than fashion).