The latest addition to my website is Ellis Sharp‘s Neglected Writer. The eponymous neglected writer may well refer to Sharp himself, a British experimental writer who is still relatively unknown. However, it probably refers to Eliot Blount, the narrator of this novel. Blount is an Englishman in Hollywood in 1932. He receives an anonymous phone call telling him that Paul Bern, the film director and husband of the actress Jean Harlow, is dead. This leads him on a trail. Did Bern really kill himself? Who was the mysterious caller? And can he make a gangster film out of a Virginia Woolf novel? For while, there is a fascinating plot, Sharp has a lot of fun and games,mocking Hollywood, making obscure literary and cinema references, telling in-jokes and following Eliot’s weird and often erotic dreams. (Yes, Freud also makes an appearance). It is clever, witty and a highly enjoyable read.