Television

An aging movie star who has spent decades at the top of the box office decides to hand his entire blockbuster fee to a stranger picked at random from the public. Soon after, he starts a relationship with a much younger woman. Watching all of this without fanfare is his closest friend, a man outside the spotlight who has also been his lover on and off. He reflects on the two decades of odd, durable bond between them.

A third character, an unknown filmmaker, is writing a screenplay about two best friends who are also lovers. Her ambition is tangled up with her need for money, and she wants the financial independence that would let her make work that matters. The novel moves among these three perspectives, each one linked to the others in ways the reader slowly notices.

The book is funny and philosophically sharp, asking what role luck plays in a life, whether it arrives as sudden wealth or as a chance meeting. Like Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays, it looks at an American culture in crisis, and at the gaps in wealth, beauty, talent, gender and youth. Its setting is a Hollywood reshaped by social media and streaming, and the question it keeps returning to is what love is worth in such a world.

The story unfolds in chronological scenes, with quick, bright dialogue and a modern, impressionistic style. It is the debut novel of Lauren Rothery.