Some books are entertainment and some are a hard read. Stay Up with Hugo Best is a bit of both. It can be an uncomfortable, read, but it is an important one. I feel like this is a real book which picks up on so much nuance. It is a rich tapestry of the complexities of the gender war.The relationship between men and women is complex, and the relationship between powerful men and younger women is complex and ripe for abuse.
Metoo has created a new world but it is not necessarily a better one. Abuse and inappropriate behaviour still happens. People make bad choices all of the time.Sometimes the people making the bad choices are woman.
Stay Up with Hugo Best is a brave book and Erin Somers has taken her own path in writing it. It is a brilliant exploration of the entertainment industry and the powerful men within it. This book will resonate with many. A great read.
The novel is an exploration of the power and influence in the entertainment industry in the #MeToo age and a meditation on desire, both realized and unrealized. Through these themes Somers has created in Stay Up with Hugo Best a wonderfully witty, wise and deliciously melancholy narrative.
Stay Up with Hugo Best charts the long weekend a late night talk show host and a young staffer spend together after the show’s cancellation. The weekend is tense, and uncomfortable and the characters so magnificently honest, as the two sardonic souls find themselves connecting.
When Somers finished a creative writing program in her late 20s, she did not know how to proceed. She was uselessly spinning her wheels. This seemed to her something a lot of her peers were going through too—the structures by which one builds a life seemed to have crumbled. ‘I thought this was an interesting time of life to explore, and an interesting predicament: how to succeed as a young woman in a creative field still dominated unfortunately by men. What compromises would I be willing to make if given the opportunity.’ From these initial reflections came her inspiration to write Stay Up with Hugo Best.
Stay Up With Hugo Best is available here.
