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EW review: Engaging 'Miss Misery'

Also: Petty 'Nanny' and sterile 'Eros'

By Warren Cohen
Entertainment Weekly

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(Entertainment Weekly) -- Nebbishy Brooklyn writer David Gould is paralyzed about what to do about his imminently due book assignment (he prefers reading online diaries to writing a manuscript about them), his relationship with his now-overseas girlfriend, and even what kind of beer to bring to a party.

As an escape, he begins blogging as a fictional hard-partying DJ -- until a mysterious doppelganger impersonates his online alter ego around New York City.

"Miss Misery" can read more like a playlist than a book, with a new song mention every five pages or so. But while his protagonist is an admitted "housebound bore," author Andy Greenwald creates some engaging characters, like a Utah Mormon teen with strict parents who idolizes Gould from afar. Plus, "Misery" reeks of hipster NYC authenticity, even referencing the speeches of real-life panhandlers on the F train.

Grade: B

'You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again,' Suzanne Hansen

Reviewed by Lynette Rice

It's a little hard to feel sorry for Mike Ovitz, the former CAA uberagent who was paid a reported $140 million upon leaving Disney in 1996. Yet Suzanne Hansen -- however unwittingly -- makes it entirely possible.

A starstruck teen from Oregon who entered Ovitz's home as a live-in nanny for his three kids, Hansen now shamelessly attempts a Hollywood tell-all/"Nanny Diaries" rip-off in "You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again." She paints Ovitz as a persnickety, soulless dad who supposedly blackballed her after she quit. (She went on to work for Debra Winger and Danny DeVito, who are spared her criticism.)

Trouble is, her complaints -- e.g., Mrs. Ovitz rarely let her use the family car for personal errands -- seem petty after the couple regularly showered her with praise and freebies (a free meal at Spago, front-row Lakers tickets). Tough job if you can get it.

EW Grade: C-

'A Plea for Eros,' Siri Hustvedt

Reviewed by Whitney Pastorek

The essays in "A Plea for Eros" -- about writing, writers, and how author Siri Hustvedt's childhood was way more sepia-toned than yours -- are cloistered, academic affairs that presuppose a kind of sterile affection for Henry James, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and loosey-goosey psychoanalysis ("In my waking life, I'm a woman, but sometimes in my dreams I'm a man").

Only one stands out: a piece originally written for London's Observer, "9/11, or One Year Later." Its trepidatious, fractured tone is so striking that when, in her final essay, Hustvedt writes, "I am afraid of writing, too, because when I write, I am always moving toward the unarticulated, the dangerous, the place where the walls don't hold" -- you wonder what could happen if she let go of that fear. Not to psychoanalyze or anything.

EW Grade: C


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