Sooner than you can say вЂњDuh,вЂќ our rootless narrator is on a private jet to Los Angeles, whose industrial sprawl emerges over the horizon like a bleached-out Oz. In exchange, she will vacate her job and drop her art class, move out of her basement apartment, cut ties with what few acquaintances she has, surrender her phone and come to Los Angeles where she will be indispensable. Her housing and all living expenses will be paid and, at the end of her contract, she will be provided with a visa to any country in the world. This star-struck nobody will employ her uncanny resemblance to the celebrity in order to relieve Rosanna of the pressure of public appearances, and thereby вЂњmake sure the money keeps coming in until sheвЂ™s back on her feet and out in the world again.вЂќ Max closes the deal with a hard-nosed business proposition: The narrator must work for the influencer for three years under a no-cut contract in return for $100,000 a year, to be deposited into a Swiss account set up in an LLC under a phony name. Only the narrator, whom the latter-day Prince Charming has been seeking for months through a web search involving a commission to informants like her boss, can help by becoming RosannaвЂ™s body double. Too fragile to cope with her life as an influencer and brand powerhouse, Rosanna has withdrawn inside her Hollywood mansion, leaving her aspirational empire of makeup, athleisure wear and sundry other product endorsements in tatters. The handsome young MaxвЂ™s story is a variation on the theme: Lifestyle maven Rosanna Feld, whose mascara the narrator shoplifted from her local drugstore as a teen, has had a nervous breakdown. military facility 14-year-old Kentucky native Jennifer Lawrence spotted while on spring break in New York City. SheвЂ™s willing to go along, primed by memories of watching movies with her grandmother вЂњwhere mousy brown-haired girls like me were swept off the streets of small sad towns like this one.вЂќ ItвЂ™s a fantasy as old as Hollywood itself, retooled for successive generations: 16-year-old Lana Turner discovered drinking a soda across the street from Hollywood High Marilyn Monroe plucked out of a U.S. A student of classical painting at her community college, she took the job to be closer to the big screen, вЂњthat smooth-surfaced place where everything is beautiful and poreless and clean,вЂќ but sheвЂ™s mired instead in the oppressive stickiness of an all-night job that feels as claustrophobic as вЂњwater at the bottom of the ocean.вЂќДЄt shiftвЂ™s end, the young womanвЂ™s boss tells her that a man named Max has flown all the way from Los Angeles to speak with her. The novel opens on an unnamed narrator, doling out popcorn and off-brand diet sodas at the concession stand of a third-run theater in an unnamed town in Middle America. Emily BeydaвЂ™s debut, вЂњThe Body Double,вЂќ attempts to answer that question through the lens of an unlikely co-conspirator. In a world where Gwyneth PaltrowвЂ™s Goop, RihannaвЂ™s Fenty fashion brands, and pretty much everything Kim Kardashian says and does are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the web influencers aspiring to be them break down the walls between person and product, you have to ask what the cost is to the soul - to whatever remains of the private self.

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