GIRL SINGER: A TWO-PART INVENTION

Anna-Lou Schreckengost of New Bethel, Pennsylvania, is plain, orphaned and endowed with a small and pleasant singing voice. It is this voice which catapults her from the ribbon counter at the five and dime to the front pages of the fan magazines. For, with the giant machinery of Sid Harper's record company to grind, chisel and mold her into the ""girl next door"" whom every full blooded American loves, with the aid of echo chambers and slick bands she becomes a number one record star and a young lady convinced of every lie she reads about herself. Her imagination takes hold of her and nearly leads her to annhilation as she defies the organization and takes off to Hollywood where she is mocked and ignored. Recalcitrant, she returns to New York, a frantic, tense version of herself, singing for her life and awaiting the sure fate which will lead her, clad in mink, back to the ribbon counter of the five and dime. Written both from the heroine's point of view and Harper's, this novel manifests a certain amount of technical facility, but is essentially a rather thin reiteration of a statement which has been made even more depressingly and, since it seems to be the intention of this genre to depress, more effectively, in Tennessee Williams' The Actress.