Killing Monica

A champagne-drinking New York novelist named Pandy Wallis has found success through writing a series of books about her alter ego, Monica. The books have been adapted into films starring an actress named Sondra-Beth Schnowzer. Now, newly divorced, Pandy wants to write serious fiction about one of her ancestors instead. The plot of the novel combines flashbacks of her friendship with Sondra-Beth and failed marriage, with her quest to kill off her character Monica.

• Pandy PJ James Wallis – The main character, a writer.
• Sondra-Beth Schnowzer - The bitchy actress with whom Pandy was once friends.
• Henry - Pandy's long-suffering and devoted literary agent.
• Monica - A Carrie Bradshaw-style fictional character.

The book was "critically reviled", according to New York Magazine.[2] "The prose is both hyperbolic and repetitive," wrote Eliza Kennedy in The New York Times Book Review. "Characters never speak when they can screech, shriek or scream." Kennedy concluded: "The entire thing is capped by a cheap revelation that's supposed to make readers think, but only made this reader cringe."[3]

Writing in The Washington Post, Bethanne Patrick called it "a sloppy story that doesn't hold together."[4] In The Independent, Arifa Akbar said: "None of it, including the final, unconvincing plot twist, is particularly well-written."[5] In the New York Daily News, Sherryl Connelly called Killing Monica[6] "an unfunny farce" and "a book of bad taste."[7] It also received negative reviews from Kirkus Reviews,[8] Kirsty McLuckie in The Scotsman,[9] Georgie Binks in the Toronto Star.[10] and Publishers Weekly.[11]