Stay Up With Hugo Best

Stay Up with Hugo Best by Erin Somers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


June Bloom, writer’s assistant for a late-night talk show that has just wrapped, agrees to spend a weekend at the home of host Hugo Best. Best is a Leno-like comedian who was once daring and edgy but is now safe and conservative and has reached the end of the road as a relevant comic. Why Bloom agrees to go to the home of a notorious womanizer is up in the air. She has no idea what he wants or why she’s there. But as a 29 year out of work comedy writer, she has nothing better to do and besides, Hugo Best is…or at least was her comic idol.

So, for the next 4 days she spends time at his vast estate, getting introduced to a series of hangers-on, relatives and sycophants, who suddenly have no reason to get up in the morning or be his friend at all. Over the course of the weekend June learns all about the sadness of fame and the loneliness of public life. Hugo is a larger than life character who has fallen and faded but who craves the limelight more than anything.

Not much really happens in this book. It’s a little like a long and sad Seinfeld episode with a few less jokes. The story is based around something funny but is not in itself laugh out loud funny. But it is very enjoyable in the meandering way we go from Friday to Monday, learning a little more along the way, all in due time and none of it earth changing. What we see is a snapshot of a life and the cost of fame, and the selling out one must do to appeal to the masses, and the hollow and fleeting satisfaction of the entertainment business.

I loved it for a while, then it settled back to a “like.” Ultimately I think this will be a three and a half star effort but I'm rounding up to four.





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