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Hollywood Wives
A sprawling, gossipy look at the women married to Hollywood's power players, worth reading for its pace, its sharp sense of the film business, and its unapologetic appetite for excess.
What It's About
Hollywood Wives is a large, multi-character novel set in the film industry of the early 1980s. Instead of following one heroine, Jackie Collins moves among a circle of women whose lives are tied to producers, studio men, and stars. Their marriages are arrangements of money, status, and mutual suspicion, and the book keeps returning to the question of what a woman is worth once her looks and her husband's position begin to fade.
The approach is closer to a glossy soap opera than to literary realism. Scenes are short and quick, the cast is wide, and the narrative jumps between parties, bedrooms, boardrooms, and tense confrontations. A crime thread runs through the book and gives it a mystery-like pull, so the reader keeps turning pages to see how the separate storylines will connect. Collins writes with a brisk, direct style and does not slow down to explore interiority in depth.
Reading it feels like settling in with a fast, indulgent entertainment. It is not subtle, and it does not pretend to be. The pleasure comes from watching ambitious people make deals, betray each other, and try to hold onto their place in a town that rewards appearance above almost everything else.
Read this if you…
- Enjoy fast, plot-driven soap operas with a large cast and many shifting alliances
- Are curious about how the film industry was portrayed in the early 1980s
- Want a guilty-pleasure read that is easy to pick up and hard to put down
Skip it if you…
- Prefer subtle prose, deep character study, or a single well-developed protagonist
- Are put off by explicit sexual content, heavy melodrama, or a lot of luxury lifestyle detail
Key Ideas
- 1
Marriage as a career and a bargain
Many of the central marriages are presented as business arrangements, with spouses trading companionship, social standing, and access for security. The novel is less interested in romance than in how partners measure what they bring to the deal and what they stand to lose if it collapses.
- 2
The price of aging in a looks-driven town
Hollywood's wives are judged by their appearance and their usefulness to men with power. The book keeps returning to the anxiety of getting older and becoming less desirable, and it shows how that fear pushes women toward surgery, rivalry, and risky choices.
- 3
Power behind the scenes
Much of the action happens away from the cameras, in studio offices, private deals, and social maneuvering. Collins shows how influence in the industry depends on who knows what, who owes whom, and who is willing to use personal secrets.
- 4
Glamour and excess as the surface
The novel is packed with designer clothes, mansions, parties, and sexual frankness, and these details carry much of its entertainment value. They also work as a kind of armor, showing characters performing success while the underlying relationships are fragile.
Limitations
The writing is often criticized as flat and repetitive, with characters who can feel more like types than people. The sexual content is frank and will feel dated or excessive to some readers. The depiction of women leans on glamour and rivalry, which some find reductive, and the industry details are impressionistic rather than rigorous. Readers looking for a realistic picture of Hollywood or for emotional depth may find it thin.
Questions Readers Ask
- Is Hollywood Wives a good first Jackie Collins novel?
- It is a well-known entry point because it is among her most famous books and captures her signature mix of glamour, scandal, and fast plotting. Readers who like it can move on to her other novels, which share the same style. If you find the explicit content or melodrama off-putting, it may be better to try a different title first.
- Is the book still relevant today?
- As a portrait of the industry, it is more of a time capsule than a current guide, since studio politics and celebrity culture have changed a great deal. Its interest now lies in the dated attitudes it captures and the way it shows what popular fiction about Hollywood looked like in the early 1980s.
- How does it compare to a more literary novel about Hollywood?
- Literary novels about the film business usually focus on one or two characters and explore their inner lives in depth. Hollywood Wives trades that depth for breadth, moving quickly across many lives. If you want psychological nuance, a more literary choice will suit you better; if you want momentum, this one delivers it.
- Published
- 1983
- ISBN
- 9780671704599
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Category
- Fiction
Book details and cover from Google Books.
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