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A Novel
by Stephen Fishbach
Book Reviewed by:A propulsive debut novel following a has-been reality TV star and a disgraced producer who get one last shot at redemption on a show set on a remote island, only to discover that the plot twists are beyond what they ever imagined.
Everyone gets the story arc they deserve.
Kent Duvall, a faded reality show winner, just wants another chance at glory—to find his way out of his depressing life and back to his highlight reel. When a scandal is captured on camera at a charity event, he gets his shot, on a new jungle survival show with seven other contestants. Each of them has been cast as a type—Ruddy the bully, Miriam the nerd, Ashley the love interest—but everyone is more than they appear.
The contestants' goals seem simple—survive the wild, build a raft, win treasure. But Beck Bermann, a reality producer who suffered her own public shaming, sees them as characters in her redemption arc.
As the schemes and strategies spiral out, breakout camps sabotage each other and rival producers struggle to control the storyline. Soon the question becomes less about who will win than who will make it out in one piece.
Chapter 1
Kent
When the phone rings, Kent Duvall is in the Memorabilia Room watching himself on the reality show Endure. On days when he is feeling his age and the slab of gut hangs like an anchor at his waist, he will pop the disc into his DVD player, which clicks and snaps like an arthritic joint. He doesn't need much. The show's intro features a three-second slow-motion shot of him pounding his chest in the tropical light, hair billowing around his face. God, he had epic hair, long blond locks that in the island's unreasonable humidity looked like they belonged to the lead singer of an eighties metal band. Last year, his wife, Margaret, insisted he shave his head. "You're starting to look like you have a comb-over," she said, walking her conversational tightrope between loving joke and withering insult. He'll watch that three-second clip again and again, rewinding and replaying, rewinding and replaying, and think to himself, That is me.
He still calls it the Memorabilia Room, though ...
Author Stephen Fishbach makes it clear in his introductory author's note that the events depicted in Escape! are not literally lifted from his time on Survivor, but as a two-time contestant, it's undeniable that some of his own experiences seep into the narrative, and it's to the novel's credit. Escape!'s primary strength is that you can see just how much time and thought Fishbach has dedicated to studying reality television. The mechanics of it, the psychology of it. What makes an ordinary person decide to go on a reality show? How do a person's actions change when they know they're being watched? How does it affect your decision-making when you know every move you make is being edited into a narrative arc that will be viewed by millions?..continued
Full Review
(664 words)
(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).
Emily Nussbaum, author of Cue The Sun: The Invention of Reality TV and Staff Writer at The New Yorker
A thrilling, emotionally affecting deep dive into the perilous world of reality television production, in all its manipulative glory. In this sharp page-turner, Survivor maven and former contestant Stephen Fishbach captures the lives of both cast and crew, offering up a gorgeously written, compassionate, but ultimately devastating portrait of the lives of the human beings working inside (and often, crushed by) the entertainment machine. Janelle Brown, New York Times bestselling author of What Kind of Paradise and Pretty Things
Fishbach has pulled back the curtain on reality television and his resulting novel is razor-sharp and darkly unsettling. Escape! manages to be both a wicked romp of a page-turner and a poignant insider critique of fame, ambition, and the human craving for connection. You definitely won't want to change the channel on this one. Jonathan Safran Foer, New York Times bestselling author
Stephen Fishbach writes with great energy and humor, as well as a deep understanding of human longing. Nathan Hill, bestselling author of The Nix and Wellness
In Escape!, Stephen Fishbach shows how everything on reality television is artificial—except the humiliation, which is definitely real. It's a scathing behind-the-scenes exposé, but also a heartfelt and tender story of people being turned into entertainment, then scrambling to edit themselves back into people.
Since its inception, reality television has asked the same question of its viewers: how much of this is real? The answer isn't exactly straightforward, and it forces us to ask a second question: what does "real" even mean?
Looking back through television history, it's difficult to determine the first ever reality show, as the genre has evolved and taken on so many different forms, but one that's often cited as the beginning is Candid Camera, a hidden-camera prank show that started in 1948. Other twentieth-century reality shows include Queen for a Day, which interviewed female contestants about their hardships in order to award one of them the title of Queen for a Day, and An American Family, the first documentary-style show that ...
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