James Robert Baker (1946–1997)

Boy Wonder is considered a "cult classic" by fans of this out-of-print novel, and was a gift. It certainly is unforgettable, and not for the faint-hearted. There's several triggers, it's not politically correct, there's drug use. But author James Robert Baker kept this satire on Hollywood constantly moving along. It's one crazy scenario after another and impossible to even try to summarize, except that it is about the life and times of one-of-a-kind movie director Shark Trager. This novel was like going 160 mph in Shark's Porsche during the entire reading experience!

Keep your eyes open for this novel in used bookstores.… (more)

I love this book: it's one of those which I ration reading - I acquired it in 1993 and read it once every six years or so. I was fortunate to get it on a whim at a CNA sale for R5.99 but the amount of pleasure I have derived from it is countless.

Basically the story of Shark Traeger and his obsession with Kathy Petro the action is presented as a series of interviews in which the same scene is described by various people with hilarious differences. Set primarily in the 60s and 70s, it is a twisted, black pastiche of a fictional biography: Shark is a Boy Wonder, a young and notorious producer who alternatively alienated and seduced Hollywood and its major players.

The constant in his life is his sick and obsessive love for Kathy, the 'girl next door' - well, several suburbs across town and on the other side of the tracks but someone he fell in love with at an early age and grew up with - and how it shaped his life and, ultimately, led to his destruction and her mutilation.

One of those delightful books which reveal more with every reading and where there are no heroes because most of the characters are pretty ignoble, this is a wonderful treatment of the powerful and power-hungry film industry and an indictment of the ludicrous Hollywood scene.

If you enjoyed An Oral History of World War Z, you wil adore Boy Wonder!… (more)