In Maud Ventura’s scintillating sophomore novel, “Make Me Famous,” we follow Cléo Louvent, a French-American singer whose ruthless pursuit of stardom is as mesmerizing as it is terrifying. Following her acclaimed debut “My Husband,” Ventura delivers a razor-sharp exploration of fame that gleams with brilliance while exposing the rotting core beneath celebrity culture. This psychological journey into the heart of ambition is both captivating and disturbing—a book I couldn’t put down, even as my distaste for its protagonist grew with each turning page.
A Star is Born…and Becomes a Monster
Ventura’s novel opens with Cléo on a remote Pacific island, a self-imposed exile from the fame machine she spent her life constructing. From there, we flashback through her methodical climb from bookstore employee to global superstar, witnessing her transformation from a determined dreamer to a calculating narcissist who believes fame is her birthright. When she discovers her name literally means “glory” in Greek, it only confirms what she’s always known: she was born for the spotlight.
What makes this novel so compelling is how Ventura structures Cléo’s journey as both inevitable and horrifying. The book moves through three aptly named sections—”Faith,” “Ascension,” and “Glory”—charting not just her rise to fame but her descent into moral bankruptcy. Most disturbing is how rational Cléo makes her increasingly unhinged behavior seem. When she steals classmates’ belongings because they interrupted her studying, or when she cuts herself as punishment for not writing the perfect song, we understand her twisted logic even as we recoil from it.
“Fame is a hard drug—a ferocious monster. And I sought it out, fought tooth and nail in my pursuit of it.”
By the time Cléo achieves international stardom, we’ve witnessed her complete ethical collapse. Her relationship with boyfriend John Cutler deteriorates as she picks apart his every flaw. She psychologically tortures her assistant Linda until a shocking act of violence occurs. And throughout it all, she maintains a public persona of thoughtful authenticity that couldn’t be further from her true self.
The Architecture of Celebrity
Ventura’s greatest achievement is her meticulous deconstruction of how modern fame operates. With surgical precision, she reveals:
- The calculated social media presence (“my socials had to create the illusion that I was giving my followers access to my personal life“)
- The carefully staged paparazzi photos (“Five minutes of domestic bliss, just enough time for the paparazzi to do their jobs“)
- The scripted interviews (“My answers were always the same. I repeated the same talking points, the same clichés“)
- The commodification of personal relationships (“My public persona is warm, the way people talk to me is disconcertingly familiar”)
The novel excels at exposing the machinery behind celebrity culture without ever becoming a simplistic critique. Instead, Ventura shows how Cléo both creates and is created by this system, participating willingly in her own dehumanization while exerting terrifying control over those around her.
A Complex Character Study
What distinguishes “Make Me Famous” from other celebrity novels is its psychological depth. Cléo is a true anti-heroine—brilliantly rendered, wholly believable, and utterly repellent. Her narcissism is layered with moments of genuine insecurity and flashes of self-awareness that make her monstrosity all the more chilling. When she evaluates other female singers with clinical precision and punishes herself for not measuring up, or when she admits “I could have done that. And frankly, I would have been even better,” we witness both her megalomania and her capacity for brutal self-assessment.
Ventura understands that the most fascinating villains believe they’re the heroes of their own stories. Even in her darkest moments, Cléo has justifications that follow a twisted internal logic:
“I’d rather be mean in a real way than nice in a fake way. If I eased up, no one would work anymore.”
The novel’s supporting characters provide crucial contrast to Cléo’s moral vacuum. Her roommates Celeste and Aria, her boyfriend John, and her beleaguered assistant Linda all function as foils highlighting different aspects of Cléo’s character. Their normality throws her abnormality into sharp relief, while their increasing disgust mirrors our own.
Prose That Cuts Like Glass
Ventura’s prose (beautifully translated from French by Gretchen Schmid) is precise, vibrant, and often wickedly funny. Her writing captures Cléo’s sardonic voice with perfect pitch, balancing between caustic observations and poetic introspection:
“I think back to the little four-year-old girl confiding in her father about how she was sad not to be famous. In that thirst for admiration, compliments, and applause was a degree of need that had long surpassed the norm.”
“Make Me Famous” moves effortlessly between psychological insight, satirical commentary, and visceral descriptions of Cléo’s self-harm. Ventura has a gift for unexpected metaphors and startling juxtapositions that make even familiar scenarios feel fresh. And her careful attention to specific details—from the exact model of a dishwasher to the perfect description of a dress that “reveals the underside of her perfect assets”—creates a world of extreme specificity that grounds the story’s more outlandish elements.
Minor Missteps in a Major Work
Where “Make Me Famous” occasionally falters is in its pacing. The middle section, chronicling Cléo’s world tours and relationship with John, sometimes becomes repetitive as we witness variations of the same toxic behavior. A few scenes—particularly some of Cléo’s cruel exchanges with her assistant—feel like they’re hammering home points already well established.
Additionally, while Ventura excels at portraying the internal mechanics of celebrity, the novel sometimes glosses over the external realities—the specific ways record labels operate, the nitty-gritty of how songs become hits, the practicalities of staging concerts. These details are less crucial to the psychological portrait Ventura is painting, but their absence occasionally creates a slight sense of unreality.
A Brilliant Exploration of Contemporary Obsessions
What elevates “Make Me Famous” beyond a simple satire of celebrity culture is its unflinching examination of broader societal issues. Ventura uses Cléo’s story to explore:
- The cult of authenticity: The novel brilliantly exposes how “authenticity” has become just another performance
- Social media and self-commodification: Cléo’s calculated online presence reflects our own curated digital personas
- Narcissism and mental health: The book treats Cléo’s psychological issues with complexity, never reducing them to simple diagnoses
- Female ambition and power: Ventura captures the double-standards facing powerful women while refusing to excuse Cléo’s behavior
- The price of success: The novel asks profound questions about what we sacrifice in pursuit of our dreams
Comparisons and Literary Context
Fans of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” will recognize a similar psychological intensity and moral ambiguity in Cléo Louvent. Like Tom Ripley, Cléo is a social climber whose charm masks a profound emptiness. Ventura’s novel also shares DNA with Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Daisy Jones & The Six” in its dissection of the music industry, though Ventura takes a much darker, more psychological approach.
“Make Me Famous” belongs alongside other brilliant explorations of female ambition and destruction like Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” and Melissa Broder’s “Milk Fed.” Like those novels, it presents a protagonist who is simultaneously fascinating and repellent, whose pursuit of her desires reveals uncomfortable truths about contemporary culture.
Final Verdict: A Dazzling, Disturbing Triumph
“Make Me Famous” is that rare novel that manages to be both a page-turner and a profound character study. Ventura has created in Cléo Louvent one of the most memorable anti-heroines in recent fiction—a character whose ruthless pursuit of fame exposes the darkest corners of ambition and the emptiness at the heart of celebrity.
The novel’s ending—which I won’t spoil here—delivers a perfect denouement to Cléo’s story, one that’s both surprising and inevitable. It leaves readers with lingering questions about the nature of fame, the price of success, and whether someone like Cléo could ever find redemption.
Whether you’re drawn to psychological character studies, cultural critique, or simply the voyeuristic thrill of watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion, “Make Me Famous” delivers. Ventura has crafted a novel that’s as addictive as it is disturbing—a sharp, unforgettable portrait of ambition gone wrong that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page.
