Arts & Entertainments

<p>Christopher Beha delivers a cutting send-up of our cultural obsession with celebrity--a deliciously witty and ultimately tender novel about the absurdity of fame and the complexity of love sure to appeal to fans of Maria Semple and Jess Walter.</p><p>A sharp-edged satire with heart <em>Arts & Entertainments</em> is the story of Handsome Eddie Hartley who at thirty-three has forgone dreams of an acting career for the reality of life as a drama teacher at a boys' prep school. But when Eddie and his wife Susan discover they cannot have children it is one disappointment too many.</p><p>Weighted down with debt his wife's mounting unhappiness and his own deepening sense of failure Eddie is confronted with an alluring solution when an old friend-turned-web-impresario suggests Eddie sell a sex tape he made with an ex-girlfriend now a wildly popular television star. Overcoming his initial moral qualms Eddie figures that in an era when any publicity is good publicity the tape won't cause any harm--a decision that will have disastrous consequences and propel him straight into the glaring spotlight he once thought he craved.</p><p>A hilariously biting and incisive take-down of our culture's monstrous obsession with fame <em>Arts & Entertainments</em> is also a poignant and humane portrait of a young man's belated coming-of-age the complications of love and the surprising ways in which the most meaningful lives often turn out to be the ones we least expected to lead.</p>