Sending Up Hollywood's Celebrities.(My Last Movie Star)(Book Review)

Allegra Coleman is Hollywood's latest It Girl. With her tangled blond hair, nut-brown tan and liquid legs spilling out of tight cutoffs, the gum-chewing starlet seduces not only America but also, surprisingly, Clementine James, a jaded magazine writer who swears that Allegra is her last celebrity profile. As the pair go hurtling through the California desert in an old Porsche convertible, their lives become far more enmeshed than either bargained for. "You know," Allegra tells Clementine in the opening pages of "My Last Movie Star," veteran magazine writer Martha Sherrill's first novel, "the Buddhists--or maybe it's the Hindus?--believe that your karma changes with every person you're with... and it changes your fate."

Sherrill should know. Like her heroine Clementine at the glossy Flame, Sherrill has profiled dozens of movie stars for ...