From Publishers Weekly
The author of two much-admired novels of suburban anomie here delivers 10 ingenious but uneven stories with a wide range of subjects, styles and voices. Shaped as treatments, sketches and journal entries as well as traditional short stories, these literate, sharply delineated, darkly funny but occasionally contrived pieces explore the vicissitudes of life in New York City and its suburbs. Moody's (The Ice Storm) most compelling characters are desolate or wrongheaded losers, like the narrator of "Preliminary Notes," a manic insurance investigator whose attempts to record his wife's phone calls reveal that their marriage is about to collapse. "The Apocalypse Commentary of Bob Paisner," a hilarious variation on Pale Fire, is a story in the form of a term paper by a collegiate misfit obsessed with connections between his life and the Book of Revelations. In "Pip Adrift," the deranged African American cabin boy in Moby-Dick recounts falling overboard; "Primary Sources" is Moody's autobiography framed as a bibliography with footnotes. The title piece, a novella, is a gritty, lyrical but dispassionate portrait of young people whose lives intersect and bottom out in a dystopian New York of heroin dens and sex clubs. An affecting but noncohesive collection that, despite flashes of brilliance, sometimes strains for effect.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
From Library Journal
These New Jersey kids have it all: rage, poverty, depression, paranoia, violent sex, cheap booze, mental hospitals, nihilism, street drugs, suicide. It's an American nightmare set to a blaring punk-and-thrash soundtrack. What are their prospects: "Nothing had come since high school and . . . nothing would come of the years ahead." What about their parents: "Lower down, Ruthie loved disaster." Not deeper down, just lower. Work is a trap, family a sick joke, and not even fantasy brings relief: "Fantasies are like ideals. . . . Close in on them and they move. Further out, mostly." Unlike Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho ( LJ 1/91) and similar rolls in the sleaze, this book is well and subtly written. You may not initially identify with these folks, but you learn just how they feel, why they try to escape, and why running solves nothing. In the end, can there be any hope that a cynical heavy metal bimbo and a fragile former mental patient will help each other turn their lives around? Well, maybe. This winner of Pushcart's Tenth Annual Editors' Book Award is very powerful. Highly recommended.
- Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. at Chico
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
- Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. at Chico
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
