The Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs wrote her debut novel about a pop star. It’s not her

Jane Start is an accomplished musician for whom commerce, or rather a severe lack of it, has gotten in the way of art. A decade after a big lightning strike, a dance hit called “Can’t You See I Want You,” her career has gone quiet. At 33, Jane is an “over-the-hill, one-hit wonder,” broke and over it, at least until her long-suffering manager and friend Pippa lands her a lucrative gig playing a “private” for some bachelor-party bros in Vegas, where she is paid to wear a garish wig and re-create the smoldering music video for her sole hit.

Her heart isn’t in it, but this sad gig is the accelerant for Susanna Hoffs’ clever and entertaining debut novel about the nagging ambivalence of love, missed connections and the transcendent power of a great two-minute pop song.

Hoffs is intimately familiar with this world. You might know her as the lead singer of a pop band called the Bangles, which sold millions of records in the 1980s, appearing in constant MTV rotation with megahits “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “Eternal Flame” and “Manic Monday” at a time when that cable channel had a vise lock on young America.