The Body Double

A Novel

By: Emily Beyda

Narrated by: Emily Rankin

Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

A dark, glittering debut novel echoing Hitchcock's Vertigo, The Body Double is the suspenseful story of a young woman who is recruited by a stranger to give up her old life and identity to impersonate a reclusive Hollywood star.

A strange man discovers our nameless narrator selling popcorn at a decrepit small-town movie theater and offers her an odd and lucrative position: She will forget her job, her acquaintances, even her name, and move to Los Angeles, where she will become the body double of the famous and troubled celebrity Rosanna Feld. A nervous breakdown has forced Rosanna out of the public eye, and she needs a look-alike to take her place in the tabloid media circus of Hollywood.

Overseen by Max, who hired her for the job, our narrator spends her days locked up in a small apartment in the hills watching hidden camera footage of Rosanna, wearing Rosanna's clothes, eating the food Rosanna likes, practicing her mannerisms, learning to become Rosanna in every way. But as she makes her public debut as Rosanna, dining at elegant restaurants, shopping in stylish boutiques, and finally risking a dinner party with Rosanna's true inner circle, alarming questions begin to arise. What really caused Rosanna's mental collapse? Will she ever return? And is Max truly her ally, or something more sinister? The Body Double is a fabulously plotted noir about fame, beauty, and the darkness of Hollywood.

An Austin Chronicle and CrimeReads Most Anticipated Book

©2020 Emily Beyda (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Emily Beyda's book is so good she doesn't need a blurb from me." (Eve Babitz)

"Emily Beyda spins gorgeous prose around the black hole at the center of The Body Double. An existential thriller that vibrates at the uncanny pitch where screaming might be laughter, and a haunting portrait of a young woman as she disappears into the sinkhole of the camera. The Narcissus-funhouse of Hollywood, the moonlit windows of Los Angeles, the two-way mirror of consciousness - Beyda arrows directly for the crack in the glass." (Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!)

"The Body Double is a deft, dark, and surprisingly unusual Hollywood story, cinematic in both substance and in style. Beyda's confident debut is both assured and unsettling. It's a noir, sure, but so much more - a tale for our times about the dangers of artifice, identity, and fame." (Ivy Pochoda, author of Wonder Valley and Visitation Street)

Not worth it

I kept listening hoping the ending would make this book worth reading it. it didnt.

Way too long

This book could have been condensed into 5 chapters. I kept waiting for something to happen, and fast forwarded through a lot of it.
I was very disappointed when something actually happened in the very last chapter.

Long and Boring

Was waiting for something to happen and it never did. Many hours of my life wasted.

Don’t Waste Your Time

This book had so much potential but never reached it. It spent so long talking about boring non important details that you get lost in the information. All for the ending to come jumbled and misunderstood. I had to read an online synopsis to understand what actually happened.

Witless

I usually like to listen to at least half a book before giving up on it but this one became unbearable long before that. To say that the protagonist is a simpleton is to put it kindly. Plot is predictable in the extreme. Save yourself a credit.

Pass!

Writing was basic while leaning toward exhausting. If you must, listen to chapters 1 & 2 and then the last chapter. That will at least give you back 9 hours of your life.

The literary equivalent of watching paint dry!

The other week I watched an early Tom Hiddleston film called Archipelago about an upper-class British family on a last vacation together before the son (Hiddleston) goes off to Africa for a year to do "good work." Two hours of nothing much happening - but I stuck it out a) because of Hiddleston and b) because of the wonderful cinematography. So it's not as if I am an impatient person. But the Body Double I could not endure.

By the time I got to the end of Chapter 6 I decided to look at the other reviews to see if I was alone in thinking this was the most interminably boring book I ever had the misfortune to buy. I wasn't...and took the advice of another reviewer just to skip to the last chapter and save myself nine hours. Even that final 52 minutes was near insufferable--and cliched. How very convenient to have everything on film so the unnamed narrator--someone who sounded just as insane and unsympathetic as she did in the early chapters--knew what had happened to Rosanna.

This so-called "most anticipated" debut novel (by the Austin Chronicle for which the author writes a column so, duh!) reads like someone's over-indulgent novel workshop contribution and induced nothing in me beyond torpor. I guess one person's "slow-burn" is another's boredom. I'm sure Emily Rankin's voice was perfect for the prose but the tone was soporific...the perfect book for the chronic insomniac.

I can usually find something good to say about most books, but not this one. And since I choose to give myself back 9 hours, I'm going to ask for my credit back, too. A truly dreadful, self-indulgent book.

Horrible

I find it hard to believe that anyone could be as stupid as the main character in this book is and why any writer would think anyone would want to read a book about her. Insipid, unbelievable and not worth my time.

Worst Story

I have read/listened over 250 books in the last year and this is probably the worst book I have read ever. I don’t typically write reviews because every person has different rates, but this is one I felt the need to write. The book dragged on with nauseating details about uninteresting characters. The only reason I hung on was the hope of an exciting ending. It never came. In fact the ending was difficult to follow. The name Rosanne was overused throughout the book, but also used for the two characters, which created confusion as to which person was being discussed. I am disappointed I took the time to read.