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A review by nglofile
Stay Up with Hugo Best by Erin Somers
4.0
3.5 stars. I had been thinking of this in higher terms until the last twenty-five pages or so, and I'm not certain how much that turn tarnishes my overall experience and assessment. It's...complicated.
A junior staff writer on a sunsetting late night show encounters the legendary host after the wrap party, and she is stunned when he invites her to join him at his Connecticut home for the holiday weekend. Though Hugo Best is more than twice her age, he is a charismatic comic she's admired most of her life - first as viewer and then as employee - and she's both curious and expectant that something good might come from this opportunity. Given the power dynamic at play, as well as workplace culture and his personal past, this is problematic, but she herself chooses to go. At 29, June is not an ingenue, but does she see as clearly as she believes she does?
The writing is smart and thought-provoking, juggling wry satire with extremes of humor and despondency. Most everything is revealed in seemingly innocuous and meandering conversations, which evokes a less-romantic version of the Before Sunrise trilogy. This was a strength. Also, June's interactions with Hugo's world (both property and people) had tinges of Nick Carraway at Gatsby's- admiring yet conflicted - and that, too, was a deft pull.
The extent to which the entire weekend is transactional, and how that changes at different points in the story, is something both characters and readers need to work out. There is telegraphing that some of the personalities or situations may be thinly-veiled references we'd all recognize, but there's texture beneath those assumptions as well. Provocative and discussion-worthy.
A junior staff writer on a sunsetting late night show encounters the legendary host after the wrap party, and she is stunned when he invites her to join him at his Connecticut home for the holiday weekend. Though Hugo Best is more than twice her age, he is a charismatic comic she's admired most of her life - first as viewer and then as employee - and she's both curious and expectant that something good might come from this opportunity. Given the power dynamic at play, as well as workplace culture and his personal past, this is problematic, but she herself chooses to go. At 29, June is not an ingenue, but does she see as clearly as she believes she does?
The writing is smart and thought-provoking, juggling wry satire with extremes of humor and despondency. Most everything is revealed in seemingly innocuous and meandering conversations, which evokes a less-romantic version of the Before Sunrise trilogy. This was a strength. Also, June's interactions with Hugo's world (both property and people) had tinges of Nick Carraway at Gatsby's- admiring yet conflicted - and that, too, was a deft pull.
The extent to which the entire weekend is transactional, and how that changes at different points in the story, is something both characters and readers need to work out. There is telegraphing that some of the personalities or situations may be thinly-veiled references we'd all recognize, but there's texture beneath those assumptions as well. Provocative and discussion-worthy.