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THE STAND-IN (Arrow £5.99)
This is a thriller. I’d never written one before
– introduce a gun and everything moves into different
territory. The idea came to me when a film actress friend
of mine told me about her stand-in, how the woman knew just
when she wanted a Polo mint, how it was kind of eerie how
this woman sort of looked like her and had to shadow her life..
It set me thinking about life’s inequalities, how a
stand-in is a person’s doppelganger, their ghostly less-successful
self. They are simply there to set up a shot, yet they too
might have yearnings to be a great actress., to be centre
stage rather than invisible . And how, if driven to extremes,
the resentment might drive someone to murder. It’s narrated
by an unreliable narrator, our heroine Jules, who we slowly
realize is quite unhinged. But after what she’s been
through, we can understand why.
I had a fascinating time researching the book. It took
several years. I immersed myself in the film business. I went
to Hollywood and talked to stand-ins, the invisible people.
I visited a women’s prison in upstate New York. I sat
in cafes on Sunset Boulevard and tape recorded the chatter
at other tables. I walked and walked around Los Angeles and
Manhattan, seeing them through the eyes of a seething and
intelligent woman, my anti-heroine Jules. It was as much an
acting exercise as a writing one. The novel was optioned as
a movie for Angelica Huston, way back in the early nineties,
and I went to Hollywood to write the script. That never happened
so I’m now writing it again, for another studio. It’s
not just people who can transform themselves, and appear in
another incarnation.
Jules is an unknown English actress with a precarious career
and a wayward but irresistable boyfriend, Trevor. But then
she gets the break of a lifetime – as stand-in for Lila
Dune, American sex-symbol and movie star. And her world begins
to transform…
“Tainted love, jealousy and brilliant revenge…this
book has got the lot.”
(New Woman)
“Moggach’s examination of the unbalanced mind
is spellbinding, and the characters horribly believable. An
enthralling read, this is Deborah Moggach’s best novel
yet.”
(Options)
“Intelligent, persuasive, sensuous, perceptive…what
an accomplishment!”
(Fay Weldon)
432 pages (30 April, 1992)
Publisher: Mandarin; ISBN: 0749308966
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