Lindy Booth is a literary novelist in this baffling, post-postmodern bookworld tale of sex and rivalry
Decidedly weird – clearly intentionally so but not always in a good way – this pretzel-shaped black
comedy stars Lindy Booth as a successful literary novelist named Eryn Bellow, first encountered working the bookstore promotional circuit via chauffeured cars and first-class flights. She’s not so much accompanied as pushed from behind by her caustic agent Carrie (Fran Drescher, a proper hoot who manages to infuse an impressive amount of disdain into the pronunciation of the word “macchiato”).
But Eryn is blocked and can’t seem to land on a concept for her next book, the follow-up to The Chartreuse Misnomer, a name that in itself is a pretty good send-up of literary pretension. A bad-tempered spat with rival novelist Theo Mencken (Peter Bogdanovich) on a TV show precedes a strange diversion down a narrative rabbit hole that sees Eryn trying to live out scenes in another novelist’s book with sexual adventures with assorted guys (including Francis Lloyd Corby and Luke Guldan), Tinder stick-figures who end up all being part of some larger, even more bizarre meta narrative.