The Next Best Thing

Jennifer Weiner, the master of the chick lit novel has written another fun plot line.
This time her heroine is a young woman who comes to Hollywood, a naive, pure, ingenue.
Ruth Saunders was in a fatal car accident as a child.  Her parents are killed and she is physically deformed.  She is brought up by her grandmother who works hard to develop in Ruth a strong sense of positive self esteem despite scars on her face.

So this becomes the story of beauty and whether it is skin deep or who you are as a person.  This light, fluffy plot takes on the larger issue of how people treat each other.  How people react to a person when they can see a physical flaw.  Whether it is scars on your face, color of your skin or sitting in a wheelchair, it can alter your first impression of the person you are talking to.
But also in the novel the author shows how fickle Hollywood can be.  You can age out of popularity in this business, also how much you weigh and your body type are important to whether you will work or not in this industry.

Told around the story of Ruth and her vivacious grandmother, who pull up roots and move across the country so Ruth can try her hand at writing scripts for television.  Her grandmother works as an extra and meets Maurice the new man of her dreams.  "As it turned out, senior citizen like my grandmother, the ones who were both ambulatory and with-it enough to get themselves to the set, read a script, and take direction, were in great demand as extras."

So between funny episodes that tell the behind the scenes story of trying to make it big time in a competitive, back stabbing world, there are some tender moments as Ruth and her grandmother negotiate their lives together and in the world at large.