Reading This Book Qualifies as a #MeToo Experience

The cover is the only thing I like
about Rosemary Rogers’ The Insiders.

Trigger warning: This so-called romance is chock full of sexual assault and stupidity, so proceed with caution. Also, the review is a bit long (sorry about that).

Well, I have no one to blame but myself. Though I’m not a fan of romance fiction, I went ahead and bought a copy of the late Rosemary Rogers’ 1979 novel THE INSIDERS, anyway.

In my own defense, The Insiders is from a period in the late ’70s and early ’80s when Rogers, primarily known for writing bodice-rippers, was writing more contemporary—and more explicit—fare that seemed to be aimed at Jackie Collins’ audience. Indeed, cover up Rogers’ name and The Insiders could easily be mistaken for one of Collins’ or Harold Robbins’ novels. Even the book’s synopsis (“From the breathtaking northern California coastline to the fierce, competitive media worlds of Los Angeles and New York City, Eve is caught in a whirlwind of the beautiful and the rich…”) suggests it’s more about a woman trying to make it in the sordid world of show business—well, TV news in this instance—than finding true love. I may not like romance novels, but I love books about the sordid world of show business!

I was tempted to read these Rosemary
Rogers' titles as well...until
I read The Insiders.

The Insiders is not about show business, or the TV news business. It’s not really a romance novel, either. What it is, is a total piece of shit.

The synopsis was at least honest about one thing: Eve is our main character. I guess she’s supposed to be the heroine, except that would reply she’s admirable in some way, and Rogers makes it clear that the only thing admirable about Eve, a former model turned TV reporter, is her beauty. In fact, Eve’s hotness is one of her defining character traits. The other two traits (she only has three) are her inability to get over her ex-boyfriend David and being a total idiot.

The book’s first chapter details how Eve is sleeping with Peter, “San Francisco’s most fashionable analyst,” but only on weekends, and only to distract her from David’s absence. “I take other men’s rejected lovers and make them over, doll,” Peter tells Eve. “I fuck them into forgetfulness.” Yet despite that claim, he just can’t fuck David out of Eve’s thoughts. Eve barely sheds any tears over David’s predecessor, the rich, handsome Mark Blair, who was not only instrumental in getting her a job at a local TV station but was also her lover for two years before he fucking died, yet breaking up with David has left Eve practically curled up on the floor in a fetal position, blubbering helplessly—until it’s time to fuck Peter, of course.

Given Eve’s crippling heartbreak, one would think that David is unbelievably handsome, with a successful career, a great sense of humor, a giving lover, and always supportive of Eve and her interests. Only the first two things are true. David’s most dominant characteristic is being an hemorrhoidal asshole. Rogers tries to soften David’s edges with a past tragedy, revealing that both his parents were killed in a car wreck, leaving him to care for his siblings, ranging in age from 7 to 17, yet David’s care amounts to little more than looking in on the kids every now and then. He doesn’t even live with them, paying a live-in housekeeper to stay with them in the family home in Albany, because who wants to look after kids when you could be getting laid? (OK, I’ll grant him that, but still….)

So, why did these two break up? During a weekend house party thrown by Howard Hansen, a senior partner at David’s law firm, Hansen’s conniving admin assistant/mistress Gloria sent another male guest to get into bed with a sleeping Eve, with the sole purpose of stirring shit up (and steering David to her bed). Eve protested as soon as she discovered it wasn’t David on top of her, but the man refused to stop doing what he was doing until David walked in. Eve was sexually assaulted, but David just thought she was a cheating ’ho and immediately broke up with her. Consider that foreshadowing. 

Of course, a relationship as toxic as Eve and David’s can’t end so easily. Eve poses for some cheesecake photos that appear in Stud magazine, the photos first enraging David, then making him so horny that he gives Eve a call. Eve, ever the doormat, is all too happy to let David back into her life. David, however, stipulates they will not be a monogamous couple. Though not entirely comfortable with this arrangement, Eve goes along with it if this is what it takes to keep David. David, of course, is jealous of her screwing other men, but feels he’s entitled to other women. Here’s an excerpt, detailing David’s views on commitment:

Someday, David knew, he would marry. Because it was expected of him and because it would help him form and mold the façade he expected to present to the world. But the woman he would marry would be carefully picked by his head and not by his loins. A suitable wife—suitable was the key word. Well-bred and intelligent, but not too intelligent. Not too astute or worldly-wise. Because there would always be other women—this he already realized and accepted.

Eve eventually comes to her senses and dumps David. Her taste in men, however, doesn’t improve. In fact, she ends up with someone much worse: Brant Newcomb.

The Psychopath and the Jailbait Masochist

Eve encounters Brant Newcomb earlier in the book, when she accompanies her fuck-buddy Peter to a party thrown by “a well-known rock singer” (Eve accepts the invitation when told she’d likely appear in the society pages on Peter’s arm, which would make David jealous). Brant is described as very handsome, very blond and very tan. Eve wonders if he might be gay, though it’s not exactly clear why she thinks this, especially when she knows he has a playboy reputation. Brant is also ridiculously wealthy, and about as charming as Elon. “I think—I just have the feeling we might like the same kind of things,” he says when he meets Eve. “Why don’t you come home with me tonight and find out? I’d really like to fuck you, Eve.” As charming as that offer is, Eve refuses. So, Brant offers to pay her. Eve (and the reader) come away from the encounter thoroughly disgusted.

In case it’s not entirely clear how loathsome Brant is, Rogers introduces a subplot involving David’s rebellious 17-year-old sister, Francie. After school one day, Francie, her dark hair hidden under a blond wig, hitches a ride with “some old guy driving a late-model Caddy” into San Francisco (allowing him to finger her for his trouble), where she has an appointment with photographer Jerry Harmon—the same photographer who took the pictures of Eve for Stud. Jerry hires her on the spot and starts taking photos immediately. There’s one other person present for the photo session, however: Jerry’s good friend Brant Newcomb. Brant wastes little time propositioning her, telling her that he’ll pay double what Jerry’s paying (exact amounts are never discussed) for her to pose for a “special” photo, without the wig, or much else. Following the official picture-taking, Francie joins Brant and Jerry in the bedroom, the men taking turns snapping Polaroids of her taking turns with them. Looking at the photos afterwards turns Francie on so much she “began clawing at Brant’s groin with her hands [as opposed to clawing with her nose?] until he tumbled her down onto the floor and began screwing her again, taking his time this go around, laughing all the while at her eagerness and wildness.”

And, in case a three-way involving two adult men and an underage girl aren’t enough for you:

His laughter seemed to mock at [sic] her, and she got so mad she began to bite and claw at him; then he slapped her hard, slapped her coldly again and again until her anger and viciousness subsided, and she was clinging to him, begging him in a choked voice to do it to her again, quickly.

“You’re one of those, are you, you little hellion? You dig being hurt. Okay, honey, I’m willing to oblige. Sometimes it even turns me on.”

Francie is fully in Brant’s thrall by the time he drives her home. Two days later she’s back for more abuse:

“How old are you, by the way?”

His question caught her by surprise, so that she stumbled over her lies, her voice uncertain.

“I’m—I’m twenty.”

He slapped her hard, knocking her off the bed and onto the floor.

“You’re a lying cunt. Now tell me.”

“Okay, okay, so I’m still nineteen.”

This time, he got off the bed and pulled her to her feet by her hair, walking her over to the far corner of the room, where he proceeded to wipe off all her carefully applied makeup with tissues dipped in cold cream.

Francie wriggled and cried and called him all the filthy names she could think of until he smacked her a few more times across the rump. Then she begged him to stop.

“I’m seventeen,” she sobbed. “Really, I swear it. But I’ll be eighteen this year, soon after I graduate. Honest, Brant, I’m not lying this time.”

Like an alley cat, she rubbed herself up against him, touching him eagerly, licking at his skin with short, urgent jabs. Suddenly, he began to chuckle, his anger gone.

Yes, decades before Erika Mitchell ever wrote her first sentence as Snowqueens Dragon, Rosemary Rogers was confusing abuse with BDSM.

Rosemary Rogers demonstrating in 1985 how best to enjoy her work.

Though he only visits on weekends, David notices a change in Francie’s behavior. By the time he confronts her, Francie has been a regular fixture at Brant’s place in San Francisco, helping herself to whatever drug is offered and letting herself be used by Brant and whoever happens to be visiting, including a rock band that treats her so rough that even Brant feels compelled to intervene. However, David can’t get her to confess to anything, and spanking her only turns her on, which horrifies her oldest brother (remarkably Rogers doesn’t cross that line). Only after Francie runs away does David learn of her relationship with Brant, Francie ratted out by their younger siblings.

David is furious, yet he refuses to get the police involved. Why? Because Brant Newcomb is a client of his firm. Yep, David is putting his career ahead of the safety of his sister. Eve just happens to know that Brant is having a party that very night (she was invited to attend as a gay actor’s beard) and suggests David attend so he could look for Francie. David is adamant that he cannot be involved. Eve, on the other hand…. Eve refuses, but caves when David applies just a little bit of emotional manipulation.

When Eve arrives at the party she’s surprised by, as well as suspicious of, Brant’s polite treatment of her. She accepts a drink from one of the nudie models in Jerry Harmon’s company and then wanders through Brant’s house, keeping an eye out for Francie. This part includes one of my favorite observations from Eve, one I had when I first moved to Atlanta: She could smell the acrid, burned-leaves odor of marijuana—it seemed to hang in the air, stinging her nostrils. Didn’t anyone smoke cigarettes anymore?

Eve spots Francie, looking strung out, her dress torn, and her body bruised. The crowd is too thick for Eve to get to her. Then, to Eve’s horror, Brant announces he’s having a slave auction, and Francie is the featured merchandise. Eve does try to fight her way through the crowd to get to her, but only after Brant smacks Francie around when she protests being sold to some hippie dude named Derek and is forcibly carried away to go live on his commune in New Mexico. Let’s repeat that: Eve passively watches Francie get auctioned off and only springs into action when the girl is being carried out the door. As suspected, David sending Eve to rescue his sister made about much sense as asking Lauren Boebert to lead a college course in theatre appreciation.

Obviously, Eve’s too-late attempt to do fuck-all is unsuccessful. Brant dismisses her protests, assuring that Francie was auctioned off for her own good and that Derek is a psychiatrist “into social work.” Do you trust him? Me neither, but Eve and the reader are asked to take him at his word, because Francie is now out of the book for good.

Now, with Francie gone, Eve must contend with Brant, who gets her another drink and then, under the pretense of wanting to discuss Francie, takes her to another room. This other room is his “playroom,” and the only thing Brant wants to discuss is fucking Eve. Eve announces she’s leaving. Brant accuses her of putting on an act. “Eve, it’s too late to stop anything. If you want it to be rape, then I guess I can oblige you.” And so, he does, slapping her around for good measure. As if that’s not bad enough, the party’s other guests barge in (“We watched you through the two-way mirror for a while,” says one), and proceed to join in, making this a gang rape.

It only gets worse from here.

Sorry About Raping You. Will You Marry Me Now?

We’re only at the novel’s midpoint, and already Rogers has crammed in an epic amount of offensive material. I’ll admit I was kind of impressed as I didn’t think she’d have it in her. I also hoped this would be the point in the story where Eve might develop a spine if not a personality and dump David, get violent revenge on Brant and, only because this is allegedly a romance novel, meet a man who actually treats her well.

Instead, this happens: Eve regains consciousness after her gang rape (her drinks were drugged, naturally) in Brant’s bedroom. Brant tells her that he had a physician friend check her out while she was out, assuring Brant that Eve would be OK. Isn’t that sweet? You better think so, because from this point forward Brant will be gaslighting Eve (as Rogers is gaslighting her readers) into falling in love with him, though maybe he’d stand a better chance if he didn’t start slapping her and threatening her with blackmail/revenge porn the moment she says she’ll go to the police.

Brant drives Eve home, where David is waiting for her. David, seeing Eve get out of his car, is immediately and predictably consumed with jealousy. Though Eve doesn’t do the best job of explaining what happened to her, she does make it clear she was raped. David, however, doesn’t believe her (“My God, everything you’ve told me sounds like part of some crazy trip—some coke nightmare.”) He says he’s going to leave and come back when she’s regained her senses. In a rare show of spinal rigidity, Eve tells him not to bother, they are through. Good for you, Eve!

Alas, Eve just can’t stand up to Brant (the only character to do so is Marti, Eve’s lesbian roommate, whose own story arc has very little bearing on the overall narrative other than adding homophobia to the list of this novel’s sins). His courting very much reads like an abusive husband pleading with his wife to come back from her mother’s, insisting he’s changed. Of course, in this case the abuser has unlimited funds and connections, enabling Brant to arrange for Eve to get tapped to audition for a nightly anchor spot with a New York City station, one of the few times in the book when her career is mentioned. Eve thinks she was selected because of her on-camera skills (that she allows her possible co-anchor introduce her to the joys of anal sex should also give her an edge) but learns the truth when Brant surprises her on her return flight home.

Then Brant proposes, which proves, once and for all, that he is certifiably a psychopath, especially when he says: “You’re a bloody Puritan in some ways, and yet you like to fuck, but only when you’re ready and when you want it—and that night you wouldn’t give in, would you, you stubborn bitch? You made us take it[.]” See, it was Eve’s fault for just not giving in.

Eve is not stubborn bitch. Stubborn implies she is capable of thinking for herself. No, Eve’s a stupid bitch, because she ultimately marries Brant and has a son with him! Good thing Brant is rich, because that boy is going to need lots of therapy, especially when he’s old enough to hear about how his parents met. Christ, I think Massimo and Laura of 365 Days had a healthier relationship.

This book was written during a time when rape-and-forgive trope was common in romance fiction, especially in the bodice-rippers, which had been Rogers’ bread and butter. The thing is, while rape is no less problematic in a story set in the 1800s, the mental gymnastics to explain it away as fantasy are less strenuous: the 1800s weren’t exactly a time of sexual permissiveness, especially for women, who were culturally discouraged from openly enjoying sex. “No” was the default answer, and thus men wouldn’t always accept it. But Rogers’ rape fantasy schtick doesn’t work so well in a story set in the late ’70s, making the mere act of reading of The Insiders feel like #MeToo experience. Yes, men need to learn about what consent means, but it seems like romance authors could also benefit from sitting in on those consent workshops college athletes have to attend. It’s too late for Rosemary, but maybe E.L. James could sign up, and since she’s on campus, sign up for a few writing courses as well.

I mentioned waaaaay back at the beginning of this review that The Insiders seemed to be Rogers’ attempt to muscle in on Jackie Collins’ territory. Rogers had a more expansive vocabulary (Rogers attended the University of Ceylon; Collins was expelled from Francis Holland School at age 15), but Collins was way more playful and, in her prime, had no problem getting raunchy (The Insiders has a lot of sex, but Rogers refrains from getting too graphic). The two writers had lot in common stylistically, with both taking a laissez faire—if not just plain lazy—approach to plotting (I’m pretty sure Rogers never wrote an outline for The Insiders and just made it up as she went along); both writing American characters that sound British; and neither author having much patience for describing settings, to the point where San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles could just as easily be Fresno, St. Louis and El Paso. Like Collins’ novels, The Insiders is populated with hot, vapid people, but none of the Jackie Collins novels I’ve read were ever this mean-spirited, vile and misogynistic. Eve has no real identity or agency, so maybe it’s no surprise she’s stuck choosing between two abusers. All I know is even Collins would balk at having, say, Lucky Santangelo marry her rapist. No, Lucky would make the motherfucker pay.

A Woman of (Four) Letters

Jackie Collins was the Lady Boss of
trash fiction in the 1970s and ’80s.

One of the many depressing aspects about the success of Fifty Shades of Grey was that it highlighted how adult fiction had become so tame by 2011 that E.L. James’ rape-y Twilight fan fic could not only became a pop culture phenomenon but also be discussed by the amnesiac media as if smut had never before dirtied the New York Times Best Seller list.

The NYT Best Sellers had been sullied long before James came along, and on a monthly basis, too. Among those regularly defiling popular literature in the 1970s and ’80s were Harold Robbins and Jackie Collins. Though Rosemary Rogers and Judith Krantz gave them a run for their money, Robbins and Collins had succeeded in making their names synonymous with raunch. Rogers and Krantz wrote racy romances; Robbins and Collins wrote trash.

I was more of a fan of Harold Robbins’ books, but Jackie always seemed a far more likable person, and watching the 2021 documentary LADY BOSS: THE JACKIE COLLINS STORY, currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S., confirmed the late author’s likability. She’s so likable, in fact, that no fewer than four women interviewed identify themselves as Jackie’s best friend.

Jackie’s story is told through interviews with her older sister (you know who), her three daughters, Tracy, Tiffany and Rory, and numerous friends and business associates. Director Laura Fairrie’s best source, however, is Jackie herself, not only from archive footage but from a treasure trove of diary entries, journals and an unfinished autobiography, Reform School or Hollywood.

Teen-aged Joan and Jackie Collins.

Jackie failed to make a
splash in the 1957
movie All at Sea.

Of course, much of Jackie’s story has likely already found its way into her novels in one way or another as her life could be the basis of a Jackie Collins book. It’s a life that includes a domineering father (Joe Collins was temperamental theater agent prone to flying into rages at the dinner table), sibling rivalry (Jackie struggled to establish an identity beyond “Joan Collins’ little sister”), an ugly duckling-to-swan transformation (Jackie matured into a shapely young woman, helping things along with a nose job in 1959), wild times in Hollywood (including a fling with Marlon Brando, whom Jackie describes in a diary entry as “kind of fat”), an acting career that goes nowhere (appearing in the Alec Guinness film All at Sea and a guest spot on TV show The Saint are her more notable credits), and an unhappy marriage (Jackie’s first husband Wallace Austin was a bipolar drug addict who committed suicide a year after their divorce in 1964).

Look back in leopard print: Jackie with her first born, Tracy,
and Jackie’s mother, Elsa Collins.

It’s not until Jackie’s second husband, nightclub owner Oscar Lerman, encourages Jackie to finish a novel she’s all but given up on that Jackie pursues writing with any real ambition. “I’d been writing all my life,” Jackie recalls. “I’d written a lot of half-books that I never finished, and he was the first person that said to me, ‘It’s absolutely terrific and you can do it’.”

That book was The World is Full of Married Men, and Jackie sold it to a publisher for £400 ($536 U.S.). To say that the publisher got a huge return on its investment is an understatement. The book’s mix of strong women and sizzling sex made it an instant—and controversial—best seller in 1968.

Jackie at work, exactly as you imagine.

As the documentary details Jackie’s ascension on the best seller lists, it focuses more on Jackie as a celebrity than a writer. Even her former agent Morton Janklow puts more stock in Jackie’s TV appearances than her prose: “It was one of the reasons she was so successful. She could go out there and promote those books and not be embarrassed.” Her Mob Wives aesthetic—big hair, big shoulder pads, lots of leopard print—was just another aspect of her branding. She looked like a character from one of her books, making her their ideal spokesperson. Lady Boss is peppered with clips of Jackie promoting her work, including a 1980s TV ad in which Jackie urges readers to “get Lucky.” (The voice heard at the end of the clip below is Jackie’s oldest daughter, Tracy.)

Two aspects where I feel Lady Boss drops the ball is that it fails to give viewers a sense of the book market of the 1970s and ’80s (timing plays a role in Jackie’s success as much as her storytelling talent) or acknowledge those who came before her. It’s admirable that Jackie was an active participant in the marketing of her books, but she was hardly the first author—or the first Jackie—to do so. That the documentary fails to pick up on the many similarities between Jackie’s and Jacqueline Susann’s lives and careers is Lady Boss’s biggest oversight. 

Jackie looms over Hollywood.

Lady Boss makes it abundantly clear that Jackie took a lot of shit for her books. The documentary tries to attribute this as mere sexism, i.e., people disapproved of a woman writing bluntly described sex scenes (Fairrie includes plenty of footage of Jackie being scolded and/or belittled by male talk show hosts). Lady Boss even tries to frame Jackie as some sort of feminist icon. Though the author did self-identify as a feminist, her brand of feminism didn’t seem to go beyond speaking out against the double standard. Women should be permitted to be as shitty as men, while true, is not the sort of rallying cry that would land her on the cover of Ms. magazine. 

The 1980s, when Jackie ruled trash fiction and Joan ruled
Prime Time.

The documentary also touches on the rivalry between Jackie and her older sister. Joan says that Jackie hated a couple men in her life (she doesn’t name names), and that these men also hated Jackie, and so things were a bit chilly between the sisters during these relationships. Though they teamed up to adapt one of Jackie’s bestsellers, The Stud, into a movie vehicle for Joan in 1978, and its sequel The Bitch in 1979, things were again reportedly tense in the 1980s when Joan, at the peak of her Dynasty career revival, tried her hand at trash fiction, starting with her 1988 debut novel Prime Time. Jackie was none too happy that Joan was trespassing in her territory, so it’s not surprising she felt some schadenfreude when Joan’s subsequent books for Random House were deemed “unpublishable.” 

On the subject of Joan—excuse me, Dame Joan—I did not always believe she was speaking candidly. Though she doesn’t appear to view her and Jackie’s relationship through rose-colored glasses, she’s careful to present herself as the ever-supportive older sister. (People without siblings might believe that, but rest of us aren’t buying it, Joan.) I also got the idea—through tone of voice and body language—that a few people interviewed didn’t have particularly high opinions of Jackie’s famous sibling. When Joan’s anecdote about Jackie’s spirit inhabiting a persistent fruit fly (seriously) is referenced, Jackie’s former assistant all but rolls her eyes and says her former boss's sister is full of shit.

From the Lost Years: A Supplemental Book Review

Jackie’s 2009 novel Poor Little Bitch
Girl. Love the title, hate the book.

Jackie’s life wasn’t as rosy during the 1990s and 2000s. In 1992 her husband Oscar died of prostate cancer. And though it’s only briefly touched on, Jackie was also losing her mojo as an author. Her books in the latter half of her career, while still best sellers, weren’t selling as well as they once had. “We changed as a world,” says Jackie’s publicist Melody Korenbrot, adding that Jackie tried to change with it. “She sat down and wrote, but eventually she became completely confused and lost.”

Judging by her 2009 novel, POOR LITTLE BITCH GIRL, Jackie was still lost in the late 2000s.

I’ve enjoyed a few of Jackie’s books, including The Hollywood Zoo, the 1975 a.k.a. of Sunday Simmons & Charlie Brick (the title later changed again to Sinners) and her 1983 mega-hit Hollywood Wives, perhaps the best thing she’s ever written (but still trash). Unlike grump Harold Robbins, Jackie didn’t take herself too seriously, her writing giving the impression she was chuckling right along with the reader.

Reading Poor Little Bitch Girl, you still get the impression she’s not taking herself too seriously, only this time the tone is less a conspiratorial chuckle and more of a “Whatever,” sighed under her breath.   

Poor Little Bitch Girl is the ninth installment in the Lucky Santangelo series, but the story pretty much stands on its own. Lucky herself is hardly in the thing. Instead, the novel revolves around four separate main characters: Annabelle Maestro, the estranged daughter of movie star parents, now running an escort service in New York with her cokehead boyfriend Frankie; Denver Jones (these names...), a one-time classmate of Annabelle’s, now a lawyer for an elite L.A. firm; Carolyn Henderson, a longtime friend of Denver’s, working in Washington, D.C. as Sen. Stoneman’s assistant (and his mistress); and Lucky’s son Bobby Santangelo Stanislopoulos, who runs a successful NYC nightclub and who was also once a classmate of Annabelle’s and Denver’s. None of these characters are older than 26, all of them are hot, and they all have the emotional maturity of junior high students.

The murder of Annabelle’s mother, Gemma Summer, is what sets the book’s story in motion, with Denver—whose firm is representing Annabelle’s father, the prime suspect—sent to New York to retrieve the titular poor little bitch girl. Denver hates the assignment, until she runs into Bobby. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Carolyn is kidnapped just days after telling Sen. Stoneman that she’s pregnant with his baby. It’s a good thing Bobby, who is just as smitten with Denver, has a private plane and thinks nothing of using it to fly her to D.C. to look for her missing friend.

If you read the above paragraph and asked yourself, Wait, shouldn’t the driver of the story be Denver trying to solve Gemma Summer’s murder? then you clearly aren’t in the right headspace for a Jackie Collins novel. That murder is merely incidental. What matters is that Denver bangs a hunky journalist in L.A., then a sensitive screenwriter in New York, and then falls for Bobby Santangelo Stanislopoulos (though she has trouble forgiving him getting a b.j. from pop singer Zeena, a Cher/Madonna hybrid who speaks of herself in the third person). Even Carolyn’s disappearance is secondary to Denver finding a man. Why waste time cutting into the meat of the story when you can eat Reddi-Wip directly from the can?

Worse than the book’s mishandled plot is its one-note characterizations. Annabelle is selfish and bitchy; Frankie is an asshole; Bobby is charming; Denver is headstrong and kind of kooky (and evidently meant to be a Julia Roberts-type character as Denver is compared to Julia in more than once instance); Carolyn is a hopeless romantic. Jackie, preferring to tell rather than show, often assigns labels for her characters, declaring that Denver and Carolyn are independent and smart, yet Denver is always getting rescued by men and Carolyn just wants Sen. Stoneman to leave his wife for her, and the idea that either of these women have more than a high school education strains credulity. You’d have an easier time believing Denver, whose chapters are written in the first person, is a 16-year-old inhabiting the body of her attorney older sister, Freaky Friday-style, than buy her as a member of the bar. 

Why waste time cutting into the meat of the story when you can eat Reddi-Wip directly from the can?

But, hey, at least there’s all that graphic sex Jackie is known for, except, nope, not in Poor Little Bitch Girl. Sex may be at the forefront of every character’s mind—second only to money—but Jackie backs away from detailing any bedroom activity, preferring to just have her characters give generalized postmortems instead (“I liked that he took his time, kissing me everywhere—and I do mean everywhere”). Considering the first Lucky Santangelo novel, 1981’s Chances, includes a scene in which Lucky’s father, Gino, slurps his spooge out of the pussy he’s freshly plowed—and described about as delicately—Poor Little Bitch Girl is practically PG-13. But then, we didn’t have PornHub in 1981, so maybe by the 2000s Jackie figured she’d just let the Internet fuel the horny imaginations of her readers.

In the book’s defense, it does have an awesome title. Also, it’s fairly well-paced and I was invested in the story enough to want to keep reading. Except, by the time I reached the end I regretted wasting my time with it. Jackie never pretended to be a great writer, but she wasn’t even trying here. This wasn’t the work of an author trying to push herself to be better than her last book; this was a brand name trying to fill enough pages to get a new hardcover on shelves before her previous best-seller landed in the remainder bin. It’s not a novel, it’s product.

Admire Her Spirit if Not Her Books

After her husband’s death Jackie eventually took up with businessman Frank Calcagnini for a very long engagement (the pair never married). If Lady Boss interviewees can’t say enough good things about Oscar Lerman, they struggle to say anything nice about Calcagnini. The way Tita Cahn, one of Jackie’s many best friends, describes him, he could well have been the inspiration for the character of Frankie in Poor Little Bitch Girl: “He was a gambler, a drugger [sic], an alcoholic and an abuser.” About the kindest words anyone can muster for Calcagnini is that he could be charming. When Calcagnini died of a brain tumor in 1998 few people—other than Jackie—mourned his passing.

Jackie Collins in a British TV appearance
shortly before her death.

Unlike her late fiancée, Jackie’s passing was deeply felt by all who knew her. Jackie had been diagnosed with breast cancer years before her death, but like her mother before her, she kept her illness a secret, and like her late-husband Oscar, chose to keep working until the very end. Lady Boss includes a clip of Jackie on the British talk show Loose Women made during her final days and her appearance is startling. She looks gaunt, frail, a good ten years older than her older sister. Still, she never lets on that she’s sick. Nine days after this TV appearance, on Sept. 15, 2015, Jackie Collins died. She was 77.

In watching Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story I came to see Jackie as an entertainer, just one who wrote tawdry beach reads instead of performing live at Caesar’s Palace. The documentary also strengthened my appreciation of her as a person. I just wish I could like her books as much as I like her. Still, I’d read Jackie over E.L. James any day.