Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of LA

Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of LA by Lili Anolik (Scribner, £8.99)
Hollywood’s Eve is a joyful, super-fun romp through Seventies LA, seen through the eyes of its best chronicler, Eve Babitz. The book is not, as Anolik warns, a biography. Rather, it’s cultural history, a detective story (Anolik tracked down Babitz, who’d become a recluse after a freak fire accident), memoir and love story. ‘The lover, me. The love object, Eve Babitz, the louche, wayward hidden genius of Los Angeles.’ Babitz has Hollywood in her blood: she was photographed naked with Marcel Duchamp; she slept with Harrison Ford, Steve Martin and Jim Morrison (though she was more impressed by his girlfriend); she was discovered as a writer by Joan Didion, wrote brilliant, sexy essays and stories that made her the quintessential LA writer. Lili Anolik has written a breathless, funny, saucy celebration of Babitz – and one that will have readers desperate to read Babitz’s books.