What do you think?
Rate this book
Pool
Ajay Sahgal's startling debut novel is as conceptually tight and brutally realized an indictment of the culture of Hollywood as we've had in years. Sahgal borrows from the world he satirizes to make Pool part novel, part screenplay - and wickedly, despairingly funny: Think Day of the Locust for Generation X. Emery Roberts is a GQ coverboy and twentysomething movie star who has just walked off the set of a $40 million picture, mega-producer Monty Factor's new buddy-cop thriller, Sun City. Via MGM Grand Air, Emery flees to the lush hills of Vermont to join a group of self-exiled Hollywood refugees who have taken up residence in an old farmhouse. But his flight is futile: Factor soon mounts a nationwide search to recover his missing property, and in a local bar young townie girls fawn abjectly. Back at the farmhouse the faces are all too familiar: his producer's beautiful, alcoholic daughter, a recently fired C.A.A. agent, and a U.S.C. film student who is there to document Emery's breakdown. As if nature itself has gone awry, the nearby lake is infested with snapping turtles, moving one outraged casualty of the industry to begin constructing that essential Hollywood real estate accessory, a backyard pool. Larger than life on the screen, in person Emery is a void. And yet as the novel progresses from one hilariously cruel scene to the next, we see that this isn't simply a pose, but the only way he can protect himself from the valueless landscape and the emptiness of celebrity.
210 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
12 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 21, 2012
No no no. Another of those books donated by someone else. Very dated 80s/90s feel. Presumably written by a scriptwriter as it read like a script. Hated all the characters. Really did not like. Quick to read thoigh...
July 7, 2025
Quite unfortunately, as is the case with many of these “no plot just vibes” novels, I couldn’t get into the vibe and it just didn’t work for me. Also, I’m not the one to say the writing of the women in this is misogynistic, but you could make a case.
At the same time, this is a book about the vapidity of Hollywood, and there isn’t really a three dimensional person to be found. Really hate having this sneaking suspicion Ajay Sahgal wrote this book so he could adapt it into a miniseries/movie, but even if he didn’t, it comes across that way.
Feel like if I read this eleven years ago, I would’ve been all over it. For whatever that’s worth.
At the same time, this is a book about the vapidity of Hollywood, and there isn’t really a three dimensional person to be found. Really hate having this sneaking suspicion Ajay Sahgal wrote this book so he could adapt it into a miniseries/movie, but even if he didn’t, it comes across that way.
Feel like if I read this eleven years ago, I would’ve been all over it. For whatever that’s worth.
December 30, 2008
I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from this book.
It was an entertaining read if only because I enjoyed reading about the characters vegging in the summer heat (as I bask in the cold of winter) drinking beers and then getting wasted on hard liquor at night.
The story is told in first person and yet I think it's perhaps the only book I can recall from memory where I learn less about the narrator than I do any other character. (Though opposing argument being, given that it's the narrator's version of the story, he's already revealing a lot about himself, yadda yadda yadda.)
Anyway, it's about a young, apparently good looking, actor who escapes his LA movie set with just a few weeks left of shooting. His disappearance causes an upheaval, natch, and is costing the producer $250K a day.
The book is broken down into 3 parts -- Act I, II, and III. By the third act, the producer decides that if Emery (the main dude) isn't going to go back to Hollywood, he'll bring Hollywood to Vermont, where Emery seeks refuge (incidentally, the house he stays at belongs to the estranged son and daughter of the producer).
But no where in the book does it reveal why Emery left, only vague answers to questions of why. We're left to default to the obvious -- lifestyles of the rich and famous, boo hoo.
It was an entertaining read if only because I enjoyed reading about the characters vegging in the summer heat (as I bask in the cold of winter) drinking beers and then getting wasted on hard liquor at night.
The story is told in first person and yet I think it's perhaps the only book I can recall from memory where I learn less about the narrator than I do any other character. (Though opposing argument being, given that it's the narrator's version of the story, he's already revealing a lot about himself, yadda yadda yadda.)
Anyway, it's about a young, apparently good looking, actor who escapes his LA movie set with just a few weeks left of shooting. His disappearance causes an upheaval, natch, and is costing the producer $250K a day.
The book is broken down into 3 parts -- Act I, II, and III. By the third act, the producer decides that if Emery (the main dude) isn't going to go back to Hollywood, he'll bring Hollywood to Vermont, where Emery seeks refuge (incidentally, the house he stays at belongs to the estranged son and daughter of the producer).
But no where in the book does it reveal why Emery left, only vague answers to questions of why. We're left to default to the obvious -- lifestyles of the rich and famous, boo hoo.
August 27, 2014
Characters were dull and one dimensional. The entire time I couldn't find a reason for this book. There was no reason to care what happened to the characters. I honestly cheered for the turtles in the lake more than caring what happened to anyone with dialogue.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews