And you thought the The View could get crazy on-screen (Joy Behar and Meghan McCain, we’re looking at you). This pull-back-the-curtain story of almost two decades of the groundbreaking talk show delivers ... This is everything a behind-the-scenes book should be—dishy, surprising, and written with the unprecedented help of those who lived it.
With unprecedented access to nearly every host, Setoodeh paints a vivid and informative picture of the highs and lows of the past 20 years from several different perspectives ... With a random array of hosts and plenty of drama to go around, Setoodeh manages to peel back the composed facade viewers see on their screens in order to focus on raw feelings and teetering emotions of those closely involved with The View. Ladies Who Punch is an exciting read that proves there’s always a little soap opera even if a show presents itself as news.
Ladies Who Punch is gleefully camp, dissolving at times into a bouillabaisse of cliché ... Ladies Who Punch is ultimately an indictment of what television and reality culture does to women—how it draws them in, chews them up, and unceremoniously spits them out. It’s less clear what it’s done to the rest of us.
