"So I'm at the chiropractor and George Clooney is there and I just wasn’t in the mood to have to talk to a movie star," Jennifer blurts out, apropos of nothing at all.

And that’s the everyday conversation Christine’s come to expect from her star-stalking LA acquaintances — slightly touched in the head by the bright Hollywood sunshine, I guess.

But while Christine is a wry witness to most of the curiosities in the strange world of celebrity entertainment, she’s not immune to looking like a pretty strange specimen herself from time to time. In the end, I just can’t tell: is the author, Carol Wolper, herself so Hollywood that the stuff she passes off as normal actually seems that way to her, or is she trying to make a really subtle point about just how insidious this lifestyle is?

‘Secret Celebrity’ clearly isn’t a star-struck vision of Hollywood — Wolper explodes many of the material town’s illusions — but there are other less obvious (though no less egregious) LA oddities of which the protagonist, Christine, seems blithely unaware.

TRIXY HONORE is a devotee of star gossip and Elvis Presley, counting among her enemies the modern colonial mindset and experimental jazz. She's of the firm belief that the lack of radio airtime nowadays given to such luminaries as The Beatles or the Spice Girls is the root of society's current malaise. Asked to pick her style icons, she would opt for Tretchikoff, Gwyneth Paltrow and Dorothy Parker. Trixy lives with a menagerie of acrylic, plastic, Piscean and human characters in Cape Town. Click here to read Trixy's latest Bitch & Famous column on iafrica.com...

At any rate, Christine’s finding that her Hollywood career is no longer inspiring and she’s busy getting divorced from her hopeless but beautiful husband. Deep in a rut where nothing excites her anymore, she’s casting about for something to help her climb out.

That help comes in the most surprising form — a chance comment by a rather cute magazine vendor, which sets her off on a hunt for the greatest secret celebrity of them all. (Want to know what a secret celeb actually is? You’ll have to read the book!)

Some reviewers have dismissed Wolper’s book as nothing more than another ‘beach read’, but, though 'Secret Celebrity' is a pleasantly easy read, it’s far better written than the average light novel and it also prompts some interesting questions. One of the questions it got me asking was: "How do ‘ordinary’ people manage to survive in Hollywood?"

It’s one thing observing the vagaries of a celebrity’s life — the weirdness of their existence is explicable. I mean, they’re famous. They’re worth millions — and adored, reviled and recognised by many millions more.

What’s so alien, and more than a little frightening, is the strange way in which these few larger-than-lifers totally warp the world around them. They seem to dominate the every waking moment of all the wannabes who fill Hollywood.

And aside from all the wannabe actors, producers, directors… there are those whose lives revolve around just wanting to shag the famous — people like the hapless, twenty-three-year-old Jennifer, who’s sleeping with a rock star.

"She sat up and I noticed her right eye was slightly twitching. ‘I can’t believe he would do this and not tell me.’ ‘Do what?’ I asked. ‘He was seen out with that stupid talentless bitch.’" But, Christine’s seen it happen a thousand times before: "It’s not as if they were the famous guy’s girlfriend. It’s not as if they didn’t know he had other women in his life and was always on the prowl for a new recruit."

As she’s come to realise, "The celebrity world offers excitement at a high price: you may never be able to appreciate real life again".

Yet, Christine, this woman who’s been round and round the Tinseltown block and sees through most of its charades, hasn’t escaped unscathed. Throughout the book Wolper reveals (unwittingly or not) that despite being able to see past most of LA’s posturing, Christine still very much fits the Hollywood mould.

Most telling, for me, was a comment near the end of the book when Christine is out walking with the secret celeb himself. She’s finally alone with him — and getting some answers — something, at last, in return for all of her savings and for the months of effort she’s put into track him down. "We took the long way back to the house. And though my idea of a hike is doing twenty minutes on a treadmill at a level-fifteen incline, even I had to concede that a walk in the country is as good for your butt and even better for your spirits."

In Hollywood, your buns and thighs are your bread and butter…