Jenny Noa’s BAD DREAMS: Notes on Life and Los Angeles by a Would-Be Has-Been is a frank, frequently raw, and sometimes very funny account of the author’s life experiences: from trying and failing to make it as an actor in Hollywood to family tragedies, personal relationships, and issues with body image and self-worth—Noa is unflinching in her assessment of her life and its trials.

The book is formatted as a series of loosely connected sketches and essays. Though the narrative plays with chronology, there is a solid through-line of emotional growth and hard-won maturity. Noa’s struggles as a performer-turned-writer (a crucible for ideas of identity and self-knowledge) ultimately reveal how apparent failure in one avenue can be turned into a far more profound victory. It also demonstrates how careful self-reflection in the light of seeming disaster can often be the key to inner truth and beauty.

The author’s prose style is conversational and intimate, revealing the roots of some of the essays as performance pieces. A few of the sections are barely a page in length, like the one titled “Bit Part: Make ’em Laugh,” a childhood recollection of the moment when the author recognized that “laughter is magic.” In these “bits,” Noa’s work is close to stand-up confessional comedy, where humor is derived from gaining a rapport with the audience (or, in this case, the reader). These are relatable tales of the ordinary madness of the human condition, or as Noa puts it: “Oh, great. Another fucking growth opportunity.”

The essays are grouped into sections covering childhood, the death of Noa’s husband, body-image, ambition, failure, and a conclusion that circles around all of the earlier themes. There are moments of trauma: the arc of her husband’s cancer and ultimate passing is heartbreakingly told. Family dramas will resonate with many readers, as will the slow realization that the dream of a long-wished-for career is withering on the (Hollywood) vine. Noa cites Nietzsche—that famous aphorism dulled by repetition and regurgitation in a thousand self-help manuals. But the truth she quotes changes one letter (perhaps referencing Heath Ledger’s Joker, too): “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stranger.” In BAD DREAMS, she faces the strange and marches proudly onward.

Readers game for Jenny Noa’s style will find that spending time with BAD DREAMS: Notes on Life and Los Angeles by a Would-Be Has-Been is similar to hanging out with that kind of friend whose stories are as unpredictable as they are engaging.

~ Kent Lane for IndieReader