Real Happy Family: A Novel
Widger skewers Hollywood fame hunters in her sharply funny debut. Young would-be reality-star Lorelei Branch is mortified after her mother, Colleen, has a drunken meltdown on national TV after Lorelei loses a slot on a fashion show to a competitor. Lorelei cuts off all contact with her overzealous stage mom and moves in briefly with her filmmaker half brother and his agent wife before taking off for Reno with her boyfriend to escape the embarrassment of her imploding career. While Lorelei struggles to make ends meet to feed her meth addiction, Colleen, also reliant on drugs, albeit of the prescription variety, struggles to find her own identity in the wake of Lorelei’s desertion. The growing distance between her and her husband isn’t helped by her attraction to a hipster musician she meets at a Hollywood party. When she learns Lorelei is running out of money, Colleen concocts a plan to rescue her daughter by staging a live intervention on another reality show, called Real Happy Family. Widger’s satirical send-up of the industry is a thoroughly enjoyable read. --Kristine Huntley