I loved Kathy Charles’ Hollywood Ending. I just wanted to say it up front so that you know what to expect for the next 500 words. When I was writing my undergraduate thesis, I would always get strange looks when I answered inquiring minds who wanted to know what my thesis was about. Death. Two years spent writing, watching films, reading and thinking about death. Although it was a brief look into the frustratingly ignored area of the combination of youth and death in teen cinema, it was also an attempt to come to terms with my own anxiety about death and loss. So yeah, you could say that I seriously over-identified with the death-obsessed protagonist of Hollywood Ending.

Hilda and her best friend Benji are on their summer holidays, and are spending their extra free time seeking out the locations and gathering mementos from the places in Los Angeles where celebrities have died. Their morbid obsession leads them to a Bukowski-esque old man, Hank, who lives in an apartment where a silent movie star (based on Lou Tellegen) fatally stabbed himself with a pair of scissors. Hilda is increasingly drawn to the reclusive and mysterious Hank, while her friendship with Benji deteriorates as he becomes disturbingly more involved in his obsession with death.

‘I read an interesting theory the otherday,’ Benji continued. ‘Some religions believe that when we die we are reincarnated, and some souls just aren’t ready to come back. They haven’t dealt with all the things in their past life and they aren’t at peace, and when they come back into the world they can’t handle it. People who are crazy or killers are souls that weren’t ready to come back, and just can’t adjust to the world again. It’s the same with suicides.’
‘So suicides are lost souls?’ I asked. Benji didn’t look at me.
‘I don’t know. That’s just what I read.’

What I love about this novel is that this obsession is never portrayed or treated as bizarre or sick. Some of the other characters comment on how odd it is for a young girl to be so obsessed by mortality, but there is never any serious judgement regarding their hobby. The inclusion of real life death stories of celebrities gives Hollywood Ending a necessary pop cultural background (and propels the reader toward further investigation), but sometimes the incessant name dropping does seem to be a tactic to prove to the reader, and the characters to each other, just how hip they are – however, it didn’t grate as much as it usually would as it seemed to aid the development and understanding of the characters. The fact that Benji wears a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt while investigating Cielo Drive, the site of the Manson family murder of Sharon Tate and others – Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor owned the property and recording an EP and an album there in the early 1990s – suggests that there is another level of awareness that this constant referencing is working on.

For some people this unpleasant image would have been enough, but I wanted more. I wanted to see the autopsy photos: the incisions made by the coroner’s blade, the thick, careless stitches that left the deceased looking like Frankenstein’s monster. But what I wanted to see most was an image from the inner sanctum: the photographs of Belushi lying dead in his hotel bed, his naked body seeping gas and fluid onto the sheets. This was the money shot, the point of impact where life abruptly ended. To see how a celebrity looked at the very moment of passing, that mysterious instant where life just stopped. That was what I lived for.

The friendship between Hilda and Benji – particularly Benji’s descent into disconnection from the reality of life – could have been explored more deeply (why, for instance, despite the disturbing and extreme changes  in his behaviour – gravedigging, the fish experiments, visiting the morgue to look at corpses – does Hilda sleep with Benji? At the same time knowing that she is being dishonest with him?) but the relationship between Hank and Hilda was more than complex enough to keep me engaged. The introduction of Jake, Hank’s screenwriter neighbour, offered an interesting perspective on surveillance of people – mirroring the Hollywood tabloid obsession with celebrities. When Hilda discovers that Jake has been listening in on her private conversations with Hank, and using them as screenplay fodder, she is horrified by his breach of her privacy. And yet, isn’t her fascination with the lives and deaths of celebrities (and even Hank) operating on the same premise?

Nonetheless, I really, really loved Hollywood Ending. I loved the themes, I loved the writing, I loved the characters. I don’t know how else to say it without becoming redundant. Much more than morbid teenagers fascinated by Hollywood deaths, Hollywood Ending is a life-affirming look at the possibility of moving forward and moving beyond the pains of the past.

Note: Hollywood Ending is being re-titled and released in the United States as John Belushi is Dead, published by MTV Books, ISBN: 9781439187593.

[If you too are interested in the Hollywood and celebrity death scene, I highly recommend Kathy Charles' blog - although be very aware that you may come away from it with a reading list as long as your arm. Lord knows I need more books to read like a hole in the head/scissors through the chest/bottle cap lodged in my throat.]