Book review of "The Year of Living Famously"
And the interior vs. exterior shapes of stories
The edition I have has its earliest copyright date in 2004, first published in Great Britain 2005.
After reading this book, I thought it best to try out Kurt Vonnegut’s analysis approach using the basic “Shape of Stories” to show you the experience of this tale. I highly recommend watching his original presentation of it, because it’s not only fascinating but also quite funny:
How it works, in a nutshell:
The center line is a normal, balanced, humdrum feeling, not necessarily good nor bad. (Think “meh” or “Could’ve been worse” or “Well, it didn’t kill me, so there’s that.”)
The higher the points on the chart, the greater the gains of good fortune (wealth, love, prosperity, happiness). The lower the points on the chart, the worse the losses (bankruptcy, death of a loved one, torture, misery, etc.).
The most popular story shape is what Kurt Vonnegut calls “man in a hole” (person falls into suffering and comes back out again to regain happiness). It looks like this:
Now in the next image below, I’ve mapped out “The Year of Living Famously.” To give you a fair idea of pacing, the span between each vertical line represents two chapters of the book.
After I drew this, I immediately realized why I’d felt dissatisfied with the overall reading experience and why other reviewers had called the main character “whiny.”
Where are the losses?
Or in other words:
How fun is it to watch someone getting everything and then complaining about it all the damn time?
🔎The Plot breakdown:
(Spoilers included, so skip this section if you want to read it.)
I enjoyed the meet cute in Vegas where Declan, the actor struggling to get noticed, hits on her. He’s Irish, and I love Irish characters. Nobody really cares who Declan is yet. He’s “that possible boy-toy of the famous star.” Our main character Kyra is there with her friend-zoned buddy Bobby, an agent. Their meeting is captured by a paparazzi entourage, but the photo comes and goes through the news cycle fairly quickly. The foreshadowing works, and it sets the tone for this romance.
One chapter later, Declan’s already found her number, started a long-distance flirting-banter campaign, and succeeded in getting into her bed. How’s that for Irish charm?😏
By chapters 7-8, we’ve sped through a summer of “bliss” (lots of sex that’s apparently so good that we don’t need to talk about who they really are as people or why else they’re together, right?) Then Declan invites Kyra out to Los Angeles, and he begs her to move from New York to L.A. to live with him. She decides she does love him, based on apparently nothing except how he’s so nice to her elderly mother figure in the hospital (which I appreciate, certainly, but there just weren’t any real moments of showing who they are or why they make a good couple). After quick deliberation, she quits her temp job and decides she can pursue her dream of making a living as a fashion designer in L.A.
Two chapters later, she’s a bit lonely and struggling to settle into her new L.A. life, until Declan proposes and makes her forget everything she didn’t like about L.A.
They have one on-screen fight before they get married, which is pretty non-eventful. He stays out all night with his old mates from Ireland who came in for the wedding and comes home in the morning totally wasted, without calling to let her know when he’d be home. It’s predictable, honestly. But then she just yells about it, he apologizes instantly, and that’s it. Never happens again. In short, (this happens throughout the book) Declan is portrayed as having hardly any flaws at all.
Declan gets famous for a leading role he got in a movie shortly after they’re married. Here is where Kyra starts resenting all the attention Declan is getting because his career starts to come first, and his time with her is now the second-highest priority.
However, her happiness peaks when she uses Declan’s connections and all these social networking parties to get a celebrity interested in designing a dress for her to wear on the red carpet. Despite that, she continues to resent Declan because she feels she’s only getting clients because of his fame.
At the midpoint, we meet Declan’s deluded super-fan who has been stalking him to the point of knowing where he’s flying away to when he’s headed for the airport. The stalker Amy Rose has packed her suitcase to go with Declan on their trip to meet his family in Ireland, and they drive away from her in a hurry. Though she had sent all sorts of delusional letters to him about how they are “meant to be together,” only now does she appear to be a real threat and a symbol of how they’ve lost their privacy forever. Amy Rose was legitimately creepy AF, so I enjoyed that because hey, we finally have a real conflict here besides what’s going on in Kyra’s head!
They have a great time in Ireland with Declan’s family. There’s actually no real conflict there.
When they return, they move into a new million-dollar mansion for security reasons under the guidance of Declan’s agent, to protect themselves from his stalkers and paparazzi. Guess how Kyra feels about it? Yep, she totally hates it, just like she’s resented every other good thing that’s happened so far. (Can you tell this is the part of the book where I started to really dislike her character?)
For the next 8 chapters, we get ups and downs of Kyra and Declan trying to protect their relationship while the paparazzi keeps attacking them every time they go outside the house. Amy Rose sends a lot more threatening letters and calls Declan’s family in Ireland to try and get their new address. Kyra has succeeded in making money as a fashion designer for celebs now, but of course, she’s still not happy because she “didn’t want to be famous” supposedly. (*More on that in the next section later because it’s a rather hypocritical thing to say in her position.)
Declan wins an Oscar! Yay! (except of course, Kyra gets fed up with the evening and goes home early after congratulating her husband). I understand you’re something of an introvert, Kyra, and yes, parties get exhausting, but why can’t we see more happiness about him winning this award? She also has things to celebrate. Two celebrities wore dresses she designed to the Oscars! But instead, she only focuses on the one actress who decided not to wear the dress she designed.
Kyra sends her whole staff home early one day to have the house to herself for some peace and quiet. Cue the attack by Amy Rose, who somehow snuck in past their ridiculously expensive security system that Kyra just forgets to turn on? (I wasn’t buying this. People make mistakes, but…it was a stretch.) Amy Rose nearly stabs Kyra so that Amy can “finally be together with Declan.” However, Kyra knocks her out with a wine bottle. Classy. Amy Rose is committed to the nice padded room she belongs in at last, but now Kyra is losing it.
Declan tries to cheer up Kyra by taking her to a quiet beach house on a weekend without telling anyone where they’re going. But someone does tell the press where they’ve gone, and paparazzi manage to get photos of topless Kyra via helicopter spying on them at the beach.
Kyra goes back to New York because she needs “time away.” Then Kyra learns her agent friend Bobby, the only one she had trusted, had been telling the press where she was all this time. Bobby wanted to sabotage her marriage to finally get out of the friend zone at last. Meanwhile, the press in L.A. spread rumors that Declan is getting back with his ex (when he’s not).
After a couple of pages where Kyra reflects that she is lonely in New York, she suddenly decides she misses Declan too much and goes back. Yes, just like that. Snap decision without any big character change.
At last, Kyra uses the press to her advantage to stage a moment of Kyra crashing a dinner with Declan and his ex to steal Declan “away from her” and finally get good press on their relationship for once. (Why it took this long for her to figure out she needed to manipulate the press to her advantage, I have no idea.)
They move to Ireland and live happily ever after.
🤔The patterns that didn’t work for me:
The whole tale is increasing gains, except for when she takes “time off” towards the end, during which they technically didn’t even break up nor divorce.
Increasing gains are fun, sure. But they’re also reallllly boring to read.
While reading it though, the obvious pattern is:
Good things happens externally >
Kyra resents it/ grows fearful / has more doubts >
repeat, repeat, repeat.
However, her losses are all internal, so they don’t feel like real “losses.” From the outside, she has everything and is only getting more, which makes her narrative voice come across as “whiny,” especially when there’s barely even one page in the whole book where she allows herself to enjoy what she’s getting or express gratitude for having any of it!
If she had a strong internal obstacle like maybe that she doesn’t believe she “deserves to be famous” or something, then fine, it would make more sense. But her entire explanation is, “I prefer privacy. Being famous is obscene.”
Ironic for a woman whose career choice in fashion design relies on her networking and becoming famous in order to make a living doing that, don’t you think?
She was using her friends to help promote her designs back in New York, and she never felt bad about that. She never felt that was wrong. But now she has the attention of the red carpet people, and she can’t for a second believe that anyone actually likes her clothes and they only wear her clothes because she’s his wife? She never said to herself in New York “they only wear my clothes because they’re my friends, not because they really like them.” That’s WAY inconsistent showing of an internal obstacle. I didn’t find it believable.
Who is the real villain here?
Her biggest enemy is not the press, nor her husband’s career; it’s her attitude. No one forced her to leave him. She chose that. He begged her not to go. No woman is actually succeeding in taking him away from her either.
Plus, her attitude changes so fast at the end it gave me whiplash and had very little internal processing of her thoughts to show why she’s running back to the same life she just left even though she hasn’t really changed.
I wanted to enjoy this book more, but Kyra doesn’t really change. She just learns, “Hey I should use the press to my advantage more and move out of L.A.” Overall though, it was mostly fun and easy to read.
📣Announcement:
After writing this post, in July 2024, I launched a Humor series that’s full of satire, so if you want comedy that’s full of more silly wit a la Douglas Adams, then please check out this first episode:
