Helpful Score: 3
Difficult to like. Deeply disturbing, nightmarish, depressing...and yet I found it hard to put down. It will stay with me for a little while...
Helpful Score: 2
Hm. That's right, Hm.
I just finished this book and I really hated the ending, which pretty much dampened my opinion of the whole book, because the only reason I kept reading was because I hoped the ending would somehow "redeem" the rest of it. Well, it didn't. It sent the rest of it to the toilet.
This book is about a woman who is constantly worried that her bisexual boyfriend is going to leave her to become "fully gay" and in the midst of this emotional vulnerability, she leaves him to live with a prostitute she met through her employer--an old lady she keeps house for who had an affair with said prostitute. The back of the book makes it sound like it's a story about a woman's self discovery, but really it's just a dark and dirty book about sex, drugs, and death. It's very dark and walks a very fine line between being trashy erotica and literature. It's hard to read on several levels--on one because the prose is sort of weird and on another because the subject matter and characters seem really disjointed. It seemed kind of like the writer tried to start 4 different stories and didn't really want to finish any of them.
"The problem with being a modern woman . . . is that you have to pretend to be stronger than you are."
And
"I decided that all this was my fault because I was the worst kind of person; a pretty girl with high expectations who wanted more, but couldn't define more and prayed it wasn't just a matter of marrying money. I heard the incessant traffic on Bush Street, thought of heroines in novels. They were always optimistic and naive whether they were old women or whores. They were always beautiful, as if only the lovely had courage enough to go out into the world. They were smart in a dumb way. They did crazy things becaus eof love and in the end always realized something stupid that was obvious all along."
AND
"I am the worst kind of person, attractive, overeducated, raised with middle class delusions of grandeur. But it's not just me; family life in America sucks, because if you're even a bit smart, the pressure from your family to jump classes is excruciating."
I got the feeling that the author of this really loved Sylvia Plath and wanted to see if she could accomplish the same feat of a whole book consisting of a beautiful woman complaining about the mess her life is.
I just finished this book and I really hated the ending, which pretty much dampened my opinion of the whole book, because the only reason I kept reading was because I hoped the ending would somehow "redeem" the rest of it. Well, it didn't. It sent the rest of it to the toilet.
This book is about a woman who is constantly worried that her bisexual boyfriend is going to leave her to become "fully gay" and in the midst of this emotional vulnerability, she leaves him to live with a prostitute she met through her employer--an old lady she keeps house for who had an affair with said prostitute. The back of the book makes it sound like it's a story about a woman's self discovery, but really it's just a dark and dirty book about sex, drugs, and death. It's very dark and walks a very fine line between being trashy erotica and literature. It's hard to read on several levels--on one because the prose is sort of weird and on another because the subject matter and characters seem really disjointed. It seemed kind of like the writer tried to start 4 different stories and didn't really want to finish any of them.
"The problem with being a modern woman . . . is that you have to pretend to be stronger than you are."
And
"I decided that all this was my fault because I was the worst kind of person; a pretty girl with high expectations who wanted more, but couldn't define more and prayed it wasn't just a matter of marrying money. I heard the incessant traffic on Bush Street, thought of heroines in novels. They were always optimistic and naive whether they were old women or whores. They were always beautiful, as if only the lovely had courage enough to go out into the world. They were smart in a dumb way. They did crazy things becaus eof love and in the end always realized something stupid that was obvious all along."
AND
"I am the worst kind of person, attractive, overeducated, raised with middle class delusions of grandeur. But it's not just me; family life in America sucks, because if you're even a bit smart, the pressure from your family to jump classes is excruciating."
I got the feeling that the author of this really loved Sylvia Plath and wanted to see if she could accomplish the same feat of a whole book consisting of a beautiful woman complaining about the mess her life is.
Helpful Score: 2
A wild tale of one woman's journey through many intimate encounters in new york. Pretty racy but not pornographic.
Helpful Score: 2
Ewwwwww, made me feel like I needed a bath. I'm no prude, but ....needed more character development and less sex. Not terribly interesting or gripping.
Helpful Score: 2
A sad, beautiful book
