Theresa Rebeck

This book is descriptive in an interesting way - it takes you into the heads and hearts of its characters. I was anticipating a happily-ever-after romance, but that is not what I got, and I'm OK with that. The story was more real than fairy-tale, and I think it speaks about how people approach relationships. Lastly, it reminded me that first loves aren't lost loves; they're part of our life love story.

The three red-haired Heller sisters have just had their big break. Riding on the coattails of their famous literary critic grandfather, Daria, Polly, and Amelia find themselves in a photo shoot for the New Yorker done by famous photographer Herb Lang. For Daria and Polly and their washed-up beauty queen mother, this open door to fame and fortune is all they could have hoped for, but fourteen-year-old Amelia had other things in mind for her future.

In what seems mere moments, the three show more sisters, regardless of their intentions, skyrocket to fame, with photo shoots in all the major magazines, a billboard in Times Square, and even a part in an off-Broadway play for Amelia, who has hardly acted a moment in her life. As the girls sign a deal with an agent, and their mother actively pushes them even further into the spotlight in a desperate effort to relive her glory days through them, the three are swept away by the tide of their own sudden fame. Their brother Philip's lone voice of reason is drowned out by the din of those who only claim to have the girls' best interests at heart. Soon, even he is shipped off to his absentee father rather than allowed to "interfere" with his sisters' rise to fame.

The narrative proceeds in four parts, each narrated by a sister, and one by narrated by Philip. Rebeck writes in a colloquial tone that gives the impression of each character telling the story from their own perspective just as they would speak, which works, but is at the same time irritating owing to the fact that teenagers don't make for the most eloquent narrators. It almost strikes you as a fictional attempt at an E True Hollywood story except for the fact that the characters' voices don't seem all that different from each other and Amelia, especially, has a penchant of excessively bad language.

Nonetheless, Three Girls and Their Brother is a page-turner and a scathing indictment of what havoc fame can wreak upon a formerly normal family. Rebeck does a fine job of portraying the effects of the sisters' fame on everyone surrounding them from their fame hungry mother who easily loses sight of her responsibility to stand up for the best interests and safety of her children to the protective voice of reason brother who is slowly coming unhinged as he is tossed aside like so much garbage so that he can't stand in the way of the sisters' good fortune to the hoards of people so eager to exploit the newest "it" girls to make a buck that they will eagerly pack youngsters off to "meetings" with middle-aged movie stars who have anything but the best of intentions. Despite my occasional issues with the narration, I found myself totally absorbed in the story, wondering when and if someone would draw the line that would stop all the fame madness and hoping that lovable loser Philip might find his way back into the family that basically kicked him out on a whim and waiting to see how much of being used and posturing for the media the girls would take before they could finally learn to stand up for themselves amid the chaos. show less

Celebrity status. It destroys lives. Unhinges people. These things, I knew. But reading this book and looking at the cycle from the inside--and from a teenage perspective--gave me new insights into the monster of fame. Although there were definitely a few too many similarities between the style of the different POVs and some redundancy, each character highlighted aspects of their journey unnoticed by the other siblings. And each of them brought something interesting to the table.

Written shortly after 9/11, this play imagines a house party with a diverse group of people, based on religion and race, anyway. The one thing they have in common is that they are rich and successful. They are living in the shadow of the attacks, and have gotten together for an elegant dinner party which degenerates into chaos. It is difficult to find much in these characters; they are the extreme of stereotypes, with each playing his role to the hilt, but no one who seems to be likeable, or show more to have a real sense of how real people live. Bombs, helicopters, and fiery holes in the floor create a backdrop to this odd mixture of eccentrics, but that doesn't really help the play much. It is talky, and not in the good way of something like, say, My Dinner With Andre, but instead in a self-important, pretentious way, with the apparent aim of exposing the self-important, pretentiousness of liberal thought. The self-righteousness screams through every line, which diminishes the play intensely, and the constant spouting off of luxury food items that were being presented for consumption by the wealthy hostess for her wealthy guests was, well, just too much. It was overkill. I've read much better from this author. show less