Despite saying the characters are fictitious, one can’t help wondering if the author of Strictly Confidential, a look inside the racy world of fashion PR in Sydney, hasn’t experienced more than a few of these dramas herself…
Despite saying the characters are fictitious, one can’t help wondering if the author of Strictly Confidential, a look inside the racy world of fashion PR in Sydney, hasn’t experienced more than a few of these dramas herself.
Author Roxy Jacenko is the real life PR maven behind Sweaty Betty and pens her encounters in this gossip-fest from the persona of Jasmine Lewis (Jazzy Lou), a PR girl who sets up her own PR agency, Queen Bee.
The bitchiness, back-stabbing and client-stealing all seems more than likely to be encountered in fashion public relations on a weekly basis.
Certainly it seems a bit beyond even the most nasty to commit some of what goes on in this book. I would be surprised if Auckland PR matches Sydney in the money stakes and thus the level of competitiveness the PRs go to. I’m not sure anyone here sleeps with someone to secure a client but the cupcake gifting definitely strikes a chord.
Below: Author Roxy Jacenko.
The book opens with I think, its best story – bar the finale at "BMW Australia Fashion Week" – with the PR girl heroine swapping clothes to get her coked-up celebrity client out of a King’s Cross nightclub past the paparazzi. The book is really a collection of escapades which at times felt a little disjointed but at such a pace that I stuck with the tale.
There are plenty of real world celebrities named, and a few made-up names that you immediately put a name to (e.g. the blond womanising cricket player rings a bell.)
I think it is aimed at a younger reader – perhaps late teens/ early twenties – as the excessive name-dropping and swearing did look like an attempt at street-cred. I didn’t really relate to the charcter Jazzy and her lack of judgement regarding her terrible boyfriend; I kept feeling that a confident, go-getting young woman would have given him the boot years ago. Instead, I found Jazzy quite mercenary, and found her designer clothes-horse best-friend Shelley much more appealing.
All in all, I’d say it’s a younger, fashion PR-world version of the Kathy Lette novels such as Foetal Attraction and Mad Cow; lots of humour, less clever puns, and a good dash of sex, drugs and no rock and roll.
Strictly Confidential: A Jazzy Lou Novel by Roxy Jacenko is out now for $29.99 published by Allen & Unwin.
By Megan Robinson, 31 January 2012
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