by Holly Madison
We’re told not to be judgmental of other people, but when someone writes a book about her “career” as one of Hugh Hefner’s concubines, isn’t she really saying, “Hey, look at me and my life! What do you think?”
OK then, Holly Madison. I think you are a bubble-headed blonde with just a wee bit more smarts than most of the other bubble-headed blondes who at one time comprised Playboy publisher Hefner’s harem in Los Angeles. You were smart enough, at least, to find a competent ghostwriter to chronicle your years at the Playboy Mansion and on the reality show The Girls Next Door.
In Rabbit Hole, Madison strives mightily to paint herself in the most flattering light — she was just a naïve little girl from Alaska who made some poor choices — which I suppose is human nature. She doesn’t really succeed, but I will say this: In the process of documenting her life, she manages to make everyone else in her orbit also look bad. Hefner, for example, comes off as a male version of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest: manipulative, insecure and controlling.
But silly me. I was hoping to learn at least a little bit about Playboy’s past – Hefner’s famous friends, the Dorothy Stratten episode, the magazine’s impact on society – but Madison has no interest in the slice of Americana that the magazine represents. She is interested in the endless petty squabbles among the “girlfriends” and with their geriatric crypt keeper at the Playboy Mansion.
No one leaves a good impression in this memoir, including its delusional author. At one point she compares the arc of her life to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Talk about seeing things through the looking glass.
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