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Overview
Wanted: Woman to talk to. Three nights a week. Three hundred dollars a night. In this novel an unusual young woman answers this ad. She is Martha Ward, twenty-eight, an ex-topless waitress and part-time mother of an eight-year-old. She drives to Malibu for her new job and discovers she must dress entirely in blue - body, hands, hair, even her face, completely covered - and talk to a man named Dr. Hamilton. He wants to talk about beauty. This startling novel is the compelling and poignant story of a young woman obsessed with her looks. Defining herself by the reactions of the various unforgettable men in her life - her father, who speaks to her only in aphorisms and platitudes, her pyromaniacal stepfather, her dramatically handsome boyfriend - Martha becomes more and more absorbed in the demands of being physically attractive. Through their eyes, she begins to see her life of solitude and independence as one of loneliness and desperate routine. Only in her nightly sessions with the remarkable but deeply disturbed Dr. Hamilton can she begin to gain control of her own point of view. Only with the one man who cannot see her can she learn to see herself.Synopsis
A haunting novel that explores the human compulsion to be beautiful
The New York Times Book Review, 1997 - Courtney Weaver
A curious and disturbing first novel.
Editorials
Courtney Weaver
A curious and disturbing first novel.— The New York Times Book Review, 1997
Publishers Weekly -
The clichs and melodrama of talk shows and pulp romance overwhelm the well-paced beginning of this didactic debut. Martha Ward, an attractive 28-year-old divorce living in L.A., is obsessed with her looks and miserable as a result, so she quits her job as a topless waitress to work for the mysterious Dr. Hamilton. The job is strange: for $300 a night, three nights a week, she must talk about beauty and what it means to her. And she must do so covered head-to-toe in a navy blue hooded sweatsuit. Under this protective disguise, Martha feels secure enough to analyze her relationships with the men in her pasther callous father, abusive stepfather, priggish ex-husbandall of whom have contributed to her rock-bottom self-esteem. Dr. Hamilton, who for some reason shares Martha's ambivalence toward beauty, is only too glad to listen to her melancholy tales. Although Wagman portrays Martha's troubled emotional life with affecting sympathy, she fails to offer readers an interesting take on Martha's physical vanity and shame: after a series of nightly conversations, Martha and Dr. Hamilton get no further than the pious, unconvincing conclusion that "what makes [people] so... enjoyable and fascinating has nothing to do with how [they] look." Descriptions of Reuben, Martha's fickle Adonis of a lover, are equally trite, but at least this serviceable beach-blanket prose has the painful ring of sincerity. Aug. FYI: Wagman, an L.A.-based screenwriter, has received the Mary Pickford Award and the Silver Eagle Award from the Chicago Film Festival.Library Journal
Martha is a part-time mother of one who works as a topless waitress. Her other job is to sit at the local donut store in the morning and think. What would it be like to be blind? What would the color yellow sound like? She ponders these questions for an employer who has placed an ad for someone who wants to talk. The pay was good, so Martha took the job. She is required to dress in oversized sweats and cover her face so that her employer can't see any part of her. They talk about beauty: What is it? Who has it? Is it important? Does it define who you are? In light of these discussions, Martha begins to see herself differently, rebelling against the fixation she has had with physical beauty. She decides to change her life and, in doing so, changes everything for herself and for her employer. A well-written, thought-provoking book that makes sense of one's person's dysfunctional life and highlights the dysfunctions of society.Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Watch HillCourtney Weaver
[A] curious and disturbing [first novel].— The New York Times Book Review, 1997
Kirkus Reviews
A first novel with a fascinating concept falters when it leaves the main premise behind to examine less interesting byways.Twenty-eight-year-old Martha Ward answers an ad that reads "Wanted: Woman to talk to. Three nights a week. Three hundred dollars a night." For Martha, life has become an endless, uneventful endurance test. She has few friends and little responsibility; she's divorced from husband Allen—their-eight- year-old daughter Jewel lives with him and his new wife—and she has nothing much to do but show up for her inexplicable job as a topless waitress. Intrigued by the ad, she answers it and is given very precise instructions: go to a pre-reserved hotel room and put on a blue sweatsuit, blue gloves and socks, and a blue masked hood, thereby totally obscuring her physical presence. The man who placed the ad, Dr. Hamilton, wants to talk about beauty. Invigorated by her anonymity and their discussions, Martha grows to depend on the meetings as the arena in which she can be herself. Revealing to Dr. Hamilton her sad childhood—unloved by a superficial and fickle father, forever out of sync with her beautiful, mentally ill mother—Martha discusses the expectations and pitfalls of beauty. Meanwhile, she begins an affair with hunky Latino actor Reuben, a sweet guy who's obsessed with appearance. When, in quick succession, Reuben leaves her and the doctor ends their sessions, Martha is devastated—though the novel takes yet another unexpected turn before the abrupt close.
Provocative issues of appearance and reality are raised here, but Wagman does little with them, dodging deeper matters by letting Martha's relationships with Reuben and flashbacks to her childhood dominate the story. A disappointing debut from screenwriter Wagman, especially considering its intriguing initial idea.