Blue Pages — Eleanor Perry

An acidulous, often raucous account of the many times that screenwriter Lucia Wade has been had by men--self-serving clods all. Lucia deeply loves her second husband, director Vincent, particularly in the star-dusted Greenwich Village days when he makes perfect scrambled eggs with a sprig of parsley--she knows he cares. And when Lucia teams with Vincent to shoot their all on a film that is entered in the Cannes festival, it's a critical success and the husband-wife duo is on its way. But Vincent's shrine of conjugal devotion is popping cracks as Lucia begins to be crowded out by Vincent's ballooning self-image. She is edged out of credits, generally ignored, and Vincent even lends Lucia's typewriter to a cupcake with connections. Then, the inevitable: Vincent asks for a divorce. So Lucia, in Hollywood, works on a turkey with a bunch of no-talents, sees her good work mashed, and has affairs--with a tan-and-tennis type who's been to est and plans to cop a Lucia script for nothing; with a conglomerate king who "prioritizes his options" and returns to his wife; and, finally, with a nice Hungarian who has back trouble. Out in tinsel town, there are entertaining portraits of a thinly disguised Great (gay) Writer and a Great Producer whose name here is Omar. But Lucia finally returns to New York, lands a landmark TV special on premature ejaculation, and in the Hamptons (with Vincent and his new wife Diana nearby), she writes a smash close to their relationship. Running fast and fierce on autobiographical anger, Perry unleashes a cavalcade of comic originals marching to the tune of The Screen Writer's Gripe. Brittle--but it snaps. -- Kirkus Reviews