I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading Maud Ventura's MAKE ME FAMOUS. I wasn't previously familiar with the French author, and the novel's title --- along with the first few chapters --- led me to believe that it might be kind of a glamorous portrait of fame and show business. It’s that, in a way, but it's also much darker and more sinister in its deliciously detailed and chilling portrait of a woman who will stop at nothing to achieve the fame she thought she always wanted.

We first meet Clèo Louvent when, exhausted by the nonstop demands of her jetsetting lifestyle as one of the world's foremost pop stars, she has retreated to what she has heard is the most exclusive getaway in the world. For a mere $500,000, she can be entirely alone on a South Pacific island for three weeks, without the endless interactions with fans, assistants, stylists and managers that define the rest of her days.

"[W]hat will keep people reading is the calculated, purposeful, near-obsessive dedication with which Clèo pursues her titular goal. The final twist is a thoroughly satisfying payoff for everything that has come before."

Of course, all this solitude also gives her an unusual amount of time to think. Inevitably, her thoughts turn to herself, as she traces her long and hard-fought journey to where she finds herself today. That journey started when, as a preschooler being raised in Paris by her academic parents, she declared that she wanted to be as famous as Celine Dion.

Clèo is nothing if not single-minded, so over the course of the next 20+ years, readers follow her journey to achieve and perhaps even surpass that level of stardom. The road feels inevitable, but it's hardly without its setbacks. Clèo does her time in school and as a bookseller when she moves to New York City, all the while struggling to write songs that will guarantee her breakout hits. Whenever she encounters frustration or jealousy, she takes it out on her own body --- cutting or burning herself as an outlet for the interior pain she feels.

Over time, Clèo's dedication to her goal means that she alienates herself from almost everyone around her. Even though readers likely will recognize these before she names them, she acknowledges that she has sociopathic tendencies. She claims to be emotionally devastated by her father's death and, later, by a couple of romantic breakups, but her first-person narration of these events feels matter-of-fact, virtually emotionless. She also repeatedly expresses disregard or even verbal abuse toward her acquaintances, friends and employees. And eventually, her tendency to do harm is directed not toward her own body but toward someone else's.

Don’t get me wrong. Ventura also includes lots of glitzy details of film premieres, couture fashions, petty pop-star jealousies, and other tidbits of Hollywood show biz --- plenty to enrapture those who like a little wish fulfillment (and catty gossip) with their unreliable narrators. But what will keep people reading is the calculated, purposeful, near-obsessive dedication with which Clèo pursues her titular goal. The final twist is a thoroughly satisfying payoff for everything that has come before.