Inside Hollywood: Dropping names, and a lot of cliches

In pursuit of the American dream, or just a regular paycheck, everyone has to start somewhere -- usually at the bottom. In “Chore Whore,” a novel about the agony of a personal assistant to Hollywood celebrities, Corki Brown is pretty much where she started 20 years earlier. If you can believe it -- and I can’t -- she juggles as many as 20 clients at $60 an hour, and each acts as if she works only for them. Now, after all these years, her employers are using her less. For one boss, money’s tight. Another has a new lover with his own assistants. A third is leaving town for six months. Suddenly, the single mother of a precocious 10-year-old boy is struggling to make ends meet.

This debut novel is no doubt based in part on author Heather H. Howard’s experience as a Hollywood personal assistant. You’re supposed to write about what you know, but as a slew of lamentable gossip lit books demonstrates, the premise of a female subaltern reinventing herself while dishing behind-the- scenes dirt is hardly original. You need a strong sense of story and character to pull it off. Unfortunately, “Chore Whore” feels more fictionalized than truly fictional.

Among Corki’s charges: Lucy, a shameless, manipulative, narcissistic actress; Jock Straupman, a security-conscious, sex-addicted, commitment-phobic leading man; Liam, a hot producer whose wife, Esther, is a pushy, New Age do-gooder; and Veronique, “the sex symbol of the 1990s,” who has an IQ of 161. It’s a thankless job, Corki says, when you’re “used, abused, and lied about. Blamed, shamed, screamed at, and ridiculed.” Learning the fine art of personal service is a great way to get a foot in Hollywood’s door. But why would anyone put up with such whims, egos, depravities and willful helplessness for 20 years?

There’s plenty of celebrity name dropping and sightings. Too bad the result lacks the deliciously sleazy energy of a Jackie Collins, Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann.

Howard can’t decide whether the book is about a hard-working 40-year-old’s overdue need for empowerment or about the fact that most celebrities are jerks. Corki’s feelings, dreams, frustrations -- and whatever else gives a character depth -- get laced in as afterthoughts. It’s funny, if unintentionally, in the way it cooks up a cliche souffle. Her son, Blaise, is a sweet, brainy boy with abandonment issues who likes to set fires and create mischief to get attention. What’s a mother to do? Easy: Get a client to send him to a tony private school on a paid scholarship.

Corki’s job situation has become intolerable because she needs more work, not because of the abuse or her need to move on. But instead of taking the big step, she stays out of loyalty, poverty and an unwillingness to believe she is capable of doing anything else. This requires a huge suspension of disbelief.

Corki could be first cousin to Wonder Woman. She can arrange Lucy’s last-minute wedding on the Greek island of Santorini, coordinate the interior design and remodeling of a client’s recently purchased home, supervise a burly moving crew and put everything away in logical-to-find places. She can cater a party for Demi, Julia, Meg, Gwyneth, Courtney, Halle, Winona and a dozen others at the last minute, providing each with her own personal diet. She has a concealed weapon permit and can clean a gun collection faster than a speeding bullet. And she can complain in six languages that “No, ordinary 310-count cotton sheets” will not do. With such talents, her new life is really just an aptitude test away. But she seems only slightly less clueless than her clients.

Corki is finally pushed into action when the wedding ceremony blows up and Lucy blames Corki. They tussle; Corki even ends up in the tabloids.

A bit earlier in the book, beset by client defections and all-around malaise, Corki interviews for a full-time job as Jennifer Aniston’s personal assistant -- and makes the short list of one. She is ready to take the job but passes on the position before even meeting Aniston, when Lucy (who believes she and her fiance originally met in Atlantis) manipulates her back into the web.

The fictional Aniston doesn’t know how lucky she is to have dodged this job applicant.

David Rensin is the author of numerous books, including “The Mailroom: Hollywood History From the Bottom Up.”