Pool: The Buddhist Practice of Inner Peace

By Ajay Sahgal

Book Overview

Emery Roberts is a GQ coverboy and twentysomething movie star who has just walked off the set of a $40 million picture, mega-producer Monty Factor's new buddy-cop thriller, Sun City. Via MGM Grand Air, Emery flees to the lush hills of Vermont to join a group of self-exiled Hollywood refugees who have taken up residence in an old farmhouse. But his flight is futile: Factor soon mounts a nationwide search to recover his missing property, and in a local bar young townie girls fawn abjectly. Back at the farmhouse the faces are all too familiar: his producer's beautiful, alcoholic daughter, a recently fired C.A.A. agent, and a U.S.C. film student who is there to document Emery's breakdown. As if nature itself has gone awry, the nearby lake is infested with snapping turtles, moving one outraged casualty of the industry to begin constructing that essential Hollywood real estate accessory, a backyard pool. Larger than life on the screen, in person Emery is a void. And yet as the novel progresses from one hilariously cruel scene to the next, we see that this isn't simply a pose, but the only way he can protect himself from the valueless landscape and the emptiness of celebrity.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802133436
• ISBN13: 9780802133434
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

A funny, fast movie!

I just re-read this book after reading it when it originally came out in 1994. I found it just as entertaining now as I did then. The characters are so interesting and the dialogue so good. Author Ajay Sahgal certainly has a gift for dialogue. There are a bunch of these young, Hollywood-types and they seek a little refuge in Vermont and try to build this pool. Until movie star Emory Roberts comes and spoils their refuge. It's a really funny and quick read. I got a lot of good insight into how these people think and what motivates them. As a matter of fact, it reads like a good screenplay. And word around L.A. is that it will be made into a movie soon! I loved it.