Miss Aluminium

Tales of the Hollywood high life certainly provide giggles and glitz, though the darkness is never far from the surfaceGuardian

Even better than her fiction: a gossipy, sardonic, nonchalantly glamorous productionThe Times

At seventeen, Susanna Moore left her home in Hawaii, with no money, no belongings and no prospects. But in Philadelphia, an unexpected gift of four trunks of beautiful clothes allowed her to assume the first of many disguises.

Her journey takes her from New York to Los Angeles where she becomes a model and meets Joan Didion and Audrey Hepburn. She works as a script reader for Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, and is given a screen test by Mike Nichols.

But beneath Miss Aluminiums glittering fairytale surface lies the story of a girls insatiable hunger to learn. Moore gives us a sardonic, often humorous portrait of Hollywood in the seventies - and of a young womans hard-won arrival at selfhood.