Official Review: Aura Rising by Joel Seltzer
Posted: 22 Mar 2020, 15:04
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Aura Rising" by Joel Seltzer.]
Aura Rising, an amusing fiction for young adults, is set in the glitter of Hollywood. It starts with theatrical agent Samantha (Sam) Lederman on her way to the police station to handle a client’s emergency. En route, she tries to plan a legal defense, while imagining the spin necessary to exploit the arrest of her biggest talent. The star is Aura Rising, formerly Audrey Rislingborgon, from an insignificant town in Minnesota. Sam has represented Aura from the tender age of thirteen, when she had become the ‘biggest little star since Shirley Temple.’ Looming large in Sam’s reminiscence is the money, money and more money that Aura has generated.
Just when the reader is braced for a tale of Hollywood avarice and scandal, the story flashes back to young Aura in her first role. She is such a sweet child that you can’t help but like her. As her fame builds, she becomes the darling of the pre-teen set. Her clothing, hair, music, and speech are copied and revered beyond belief. Okay then, this is a story about the loss of innocence in movie land. Well no, it’s not. Aura continues on her meteoric rise to fame, without paying the least attention to her public. She plays her role of teen idol without changing to suit either the praise or censure of her following. By the end of the third chapter, I am ready to join Aura’s fan club.
In spite of her solid, Midwestern commonsense and self-reliance, Aura is lonely. She is well aware that virtually all the people who surround her expect something from her. Even her best friend, the president of her fan club, gets five dollars for each of the fifty thousand plus members of the club. Is this a story about the pathology of success that inevitably leads to decline, even obscurity? Aura’s arrest for drinking and drug possession certainly sounds that way. To the reader’s surprise, we find that an evil journalist is stalking Aura, ever critical of her boyfriends and off-set activities. Facing an unsympathetic judge, Aura accepts community service in lieu of a sentence. At this point I am thinking that Aura Rising is a three-star book.
Then it gets really silly. Aura does her community service in an obscure and destitute African nation. Here she does gardening and teaches at the national orphanage. She also stages the world’s most elaborate music video of all time, overcomes a revolutionary force and brings economic prosperity to all. Her activities have all the authenticity of a Gilligan’s Island dream sequence. The only character in the last half of the book who is not cartoonish is Ted, Aura’s love interest. His quiet confidence rang true. I liked the author’s ability to show Ted’s good qualities without wrapping them in show-biz exaggeration. The author describes him as one of the few people in Aura’s life who did not have to shout out loud for the world to appreciate them. The remaining players were all extraordinary characters. The author’s caricatures were only mildly amusing. There were no belly laughs in the resolution of this farcical fantasy. Just the same, I have to admit I smiled a lot at the sheer absurdity of the plot. Tell me again, why does the judge order community service in Africa?
Aura Rising has quite a few rough spots. Joel Seltzer needs to employ a good proofreader. The text has so many extra spaces between words that they are too numerous to count. The author incorrectly places the city of Des Moines in Nebraska instead of Iowa. Early in the narrative, he misspells the last name of a major protagonist. Typographical and punctuation errors are abundant. Due to this annoying and disruptive lack of professional editing, I have to drop the rating to two out of four stars.
This book has no erotic love scenes and very little bad language. There is only one scene of gun violence. Without these, the book might be very enjoyable for the young reader. However, I hesitate to recommend that parents buy this book for a pre-teen.
I had to think for a while to focus on what was disturbing me about the book. The author holds Aura up as a paragon of popularity. Fortunately, she does not become vain or conceited in her fame. Neither does she exert any effort to achieve it. Her celebrity is not the result of genius. To her fans, it is enough that she simply exists. She is able to remain aloof, untouched as the masses glut themselves on a publicity-fueled rampage of enhanced reality. My impression was that this foolish and empty image symbolized a future worth having. With so many youngsters being the brunt of bullying and torment in the name of popularity, is this really the tone we need to set? It is as if the author is stressing that an ordinary life is not good enough. Although I found the first part of the book to be quite engaging, I lost interest by the end.
******
Aura Rising
View: on Bookshelves
Aura Rising, an amusing fiction for young adults, is set in the glitter of Hollywood. It starts with theatrical agent Samantha (Sam) Lederman on her way to the police station to handle a client’s emergency. En route, she tries to plan a legal defense, while imagining the spin necessary to exploit the arrest of her biggest talent. The star is Aura Rising, formerly Audrey Rislingborgon, from an insignificant town in Minnesota. Sam has represented Aura from the tender age of thirteen, when she had become the ‘biggest little star since Shirley Temple.’ Looming large in Sam’s reminiscence is the money, money and more money that Aura has generated.
Just when the reader is braced for a tale of Hollywood avarice and scandal, the story flashes back to young Aura in her first role. She is such a sweet child that you can’t help but like her. As her fame builds, she becomes the darling of the pre-teen set. Her clothing, hair, music, and speech are copied and revered beyond belief. Okay then, this is a story about the loss of innocence in movie land. Well no, it’s not. Aura continues on her meteoric rise to fame, without paying the least attention to her public. She plays her role of teen idol without changing to suit either the praise or censure of her following. By the end of the third chapter, I am ready to join Aura’s fan club.
In spite of her solid, Midwestern commonsense and self-reliance, Aura is lonely. She is well aware that virtually all the people who surround her expect something from her. Even her best friend, the president of her fan club, gets five dollars for each of the fifty thousand plus members of the club. Is this a story about the pathology of success that inevitably leads to decline, even obscurity? Aura’s arrest for drinking and drug possession certainly sounds that way. To the reader’s surprise, we find that an evil journalist is stalking Aura, ever critical of her boyfriends and off-set activities. Facing an unsympathetic judge, Aura accepts community service in lieu of a sentence. At this point I am thinking that Aura Rising is a three-star book.
Then it gets really silly. Aura does her community service in an obscure and destitute African nation. Here she does gardening and teaches at the national orphanage. She also stages the world’s most elaborate music video of all time, overcomes a revolutionary force and brings economic prosperity to all. Her activities have all the authenticity of a Gilligan’s Island dream sequence. The only character in the last half of the book who is not cartoonish is Ted, Aura’s love interest. His quiet confidence rang true. I liked the author’s ability to show Ted’s good qualities without wrapping them in show-biz exaggeration. The author describes him as one of the few people in Aura’s life who did not have to shout out loud for the world to appreciate them. The remaining players were all extraordinary characters. The author’s caricatures were only mildly amusing. There were no belly laughs in the resolution of this farcical fantasy. Just the same, I have to admit I smiled a lot at the sheer absurdity of the plot. Tell me again, why does the judge order community service in Africa?
Aura Rising has quite a few rough spots. Joel Seltzer needs to employ a good proofreader. The text has so many extra spaces between words that they are too numerous to count. The author incorrectly places the city of Des Moines in Nebraska instead of Iowa. Early in the narrative, he misspells the last name of a major protagonist. Typographical and punctuation errors are abundant. Due to this annoying and disruptive lack of professional editing, I have to drop the rating to two out of four stars.
This book has no erotic love scenes and very little bad language. There is only one scene of gun violence. Without these, the book might be very enjoyable for the young reader. However, I hesitate to recommend that parents buy this book for a pre-teen.
I had to think for a while to focus on what was disturbing me about the book. The author holds Aura up as a paragon of popularity. Fortunately, she does not become vain or conceited in her fame. Neither does she exert any effort to achieve it. Her celebrity is not the result of genius. To her fans, it is enough that she simply exists. She is able to remain aloof, untouched as the masses glut themselves on a publicity-fueled rampage of enhanced reality. My impression was that this foolish and empty image symbolized a future worth having. With so many youngsters being the brunt of bullying and torment in the name of popularity, is this really the tone we need to set? It is as if the author is stressing that an ordinary life is not good enough. Although I found the first part of the book to be quite engaging, I lost interest by the end.
******
Aura Rising
View: on Bookshelves
