Molly Bit

November 1, 2019
A portrait of the actress as a young woman. We meet Molly Bit in a chapter called "College: 1993." It's an arts school where "everybody wanted to be famous...and if they didn't get famous, they might die right there in their beds." Unlike the other kids, Molly Bit has no doubt that she will hit the mark, and after a brief second chapter called "Dues: 1997," we arrive at "Success: 2001." By now, Molly has made two movies with her best friend and has appeared in a three-page photo spread in Vanity Fair titled "Girl From the Future: Why in Six Months Everyone Will Know Who Molly Bit Is." This proves to be no exaggeration--she soon reaches mega-star status, with the action figures and tabloid exposés to prove it. By "Venice: 2006," she's got a publicist, a personal assistant, and a bodyguard she's paying 50,000 euros for four days--because she also has a very persistent stalker. The plot of Bevacqua's debut has a dramatic twist two-thirds of the way through, but there's something a bit mechanical about it, and subsequent sections lose momentum. Though the author sets out to reveal the human being inside a Hollywood legend, Molly never quite comes into focus. We spend a fair amount of time inside her head, but her thoughts have a generic quality: "Southern California tried to rob you of your deep interiority. LA did. Hollywood. It was impossible not to lose at least some of it, for shallow thoughts and conversations to cast a spell that sealed a layer off. For six months she'd been contemplating an ass lift." This feels more like a hypothesis about what an actress would think than what one specific, fully realized character thinks. Most enjoyable for its smart, often humorous details about moviemaking and celebrity culture.

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November 1, 2019
Bevacqua's first novel outlines the rise of a Hollywood star using an interconnected short-story style. In 1993, Molly Bit acts in experimental, sometimes degrading, short films written and directed by her college cohorts. But she's certain that she has that it factor, and that fame is in her future. Molly's big break comes in the form of a horror movie that gets her noticed by Hollywood bigwigs, and causes her to tank her friend Abigail's project. Nominated for an Oscar, recognized everywhere, Molly has achieved the fame she knew she was destined for?but she will pay a tragic price. Taking place over the course of 20 years, at times the novel leaps ahead years, and pauses to detail seemingly small moments in Molly's life before jumping ahead again. While Bevacqua's writing is crisp and keeps a fast pace, the character development, especially for secondary characters, suffers from this style and the narrative occasionally flounders. Still, Molly Bit is an intriguing debut and should keep Bevacqua on readers' radar in the future.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)