When someone senior tells you how pretty you look, you smile and thank him – and make a mental note never to wear that dress alone with him again. She was needy, unreasonable and insistent on maintaining a strong dependency between herself and her daughter. It’s a high-wire balancing act of mixed messaging – no easy feat, but I have so many years of practice.

This summarises the theme of the book pretty well, as a Hollywood wannabe climbs the slippery slope to greatness. When I drove onto the studio lot for my first day of work, I was 23 years old and considered myself fiercely principled. The writing is fresh and stylish and the conversational tone helps the thought-provoking narrative zip along. I get the impression it was supposed to be more hard hitting than it was, and it didn’t really say more than we already know. I was surprised when it ended – this is quite a slim novel and it felt like she was just getting started, when it ended.From my perch outside my boss’s office, I saw how little my personal opinion mattered, how interchangeable and dispensable I was. Although I don’t think she would have described herself in this way, I thought that she was extremely strong willed and she had a firm understanding of her own boundaries. I was a teeny tiny bit disappointed with the open ending but hopefully it means that there may be more to come as I would love to read more about these characters and their lives.

I’m not sure if asking them out loud is useful, but it’s a start, and it feels more productive than silence.Do I actually care enough about these systemic issues or am I also, in a way, exploiting them as literary material for my own professional gain? It’s an ugly truth, and one that’s difficult to discuss in the nuanced way it deserves, but women are often better foot soldiers of the patriarchy than men. He ended up leaving that production company shortly thereafter, so I didn’t feel compelled to engage in further communication.