Ram Review: Tell-All

            I will be honest; I am always a little leery of books that have fancy, creative formats. I am all for chapters, and even parts, but when these become cutely renamed as scenes and acts when it is about a movie, I assume that that plot will be just as contrived.

            With that dubious outlook, I entered into Chuck Palahniuk's Tell-All. It took me a little while to figure out what, precisely, was going on at first. How is the narrator related to the subject? How do the ex-husbands connect? Who was murdered, who died and who is still alive? Who is the protagonist in love with? The plot itself, however, is quite good once you figure it out.

            The narrator, Hazie Coogan, is the person who created Katherine Kenton, an aging, glamorous, movie star with several ex-husbands and a penchant for younger men. Hazie more or less serves as Katherine's personal assistant, doing everything from drawing her bath to scheduling her appearances to (secretly) protecting her from any evil man who may break her heart.

            When Katherine meets another young man, Webster Carlton Westward III, Hazie worries. Unfortunately, even all of the precautions she takes against this intruder (including shredding the flowers he sends and relaying messages about dates erroneously), do not seem to work.

            Paranoid about Katherine's reputation, and with a dozen horror stories about young, money-hungry men lapping up aging stars' stories in order to write a biography (and then publishing it the moment they die, negating any worry of denial or correction), Hazie goes searching. To her dismay, but not surprise, she finds one such manuscript; however, this one is curiously finished—with Katherine's manner of death.

            The plot plays itself out in an amusing way, and this basic skeleton of it is straightforward enough. It is the addition of side characters (I often got deceased husbands confused with deceased dogs, and lost track of which ex-husband was gay, which was in a soap opera, etc.), the inclusion of distracting subplots (such as when Katherine decides to adopt a child) and the lingering confusion of exactly what happened in the past (was that husband killed? And if so, who did it?) that take away from the cleverness of the story.

            If Palahniuk had not strayed so much, and worked to streamline and bolster the main points, the novel would have been a fascinating psychological intrigue. Unfortunately, he insisted on bringing in all sorts of unnecessary curves that are ironed out too late. It is still a good book, and I enjoyed it; I just do not think I got the most out of it I could have.