The Stand-in A Novel

“Frightening and funny, passionate and aloof by turns, catapulting from London to New York to Los Angeles and back again within the world of film and its hangers-on, The Stand-in is … a psychological thriller about a movie stand-in who begins to confuse her professional role with real life. Jules, single and thirty-eight, is an English actress working on the fringes of theater and still hoping for her big break. The one thing in her life that makes her truly happy is her relationship with her lover, Trev, a young charmer with an edge of danger and unreliability that enthralls her. Jules’s ticket to Hollywood is handed to her suddenly and unexpectedly when she is recruited to act as stand-in for Lila Dune, a famous American movie star. Lila is a sultry blond seductress whose looks and charisma have made her a living legend. The two women resemble each other–Jules is a less luminous version of Lila–and on location together, they become friends–of a sort. Lila is flattered by Jules’s attention and envious of her education in the theater. For her part, Jules is increasingly mesmerized by and envious of Lila: her beauty, her wealth, her glamorous life. A stand-in is simply a mannequin that the Elm crew uses as it focuses the cameras and sets up the lights; it is only when Jules is with Lila that anyone even “sees” her. Although Jules feels pale next to Lila’s spotlight, she also enjoys some of its reflected glory. But as the two women spend more and more time with each other-going shopping, strolling Manhattan’s streets, being together continuously on movie sets in New York and Los Angeles–Jules begins acting as Lila’s stand-in in her private as well as cinematic life. And when she discovers that Lila has betrayed her, Jules begins a long, spiraling descent into madness and revenge. At last the stand-in takes center stage, and has to act-for her life. Everyone, at some point, has felt like a stand-in-a fake, a fraud, an actor–pretending to be someone he or she is not, and constantly afraid of discovery. Everyone has also known the influence of and felt jealous of another, powerful personality. And anyone who has had these experiences will be riveted, and disturbed, by Deborah Moggach’s brilliant novel, a literate thriller of the highest order.”–Dust jacket.