"'Suicide Blonde' is in the tradition of Djuna Barnes, Georges Bataille, and marguerite Duras. It's about life on the edge when there isn't an edge, the part of town where you're not supposed to go, beauty where there shouldn't be any." - Robert Olmstead
"A steamer....The diary of a death wish....'Suicide Blonde' doles out some bitter, valuable lessons."~Jenkyns
"Erotic....Beautifully crafted prose." Parini
Suicide Blonde is the dark, intense, erotic story of a young woman's sexual and psychological odyssey. Set In San Francisco's demimonde of sexually ambiguous, bourbon-drinking, drug-taking outsiders, the novel involves themes of identity, the past's impingement on the present, and sexuality as a common, and now tainted, language. Jesse is a beautiful twenty-nine-year-old woman adrift in a world of confused and forbidden desire, desperately trying to sustain a connection to her bisexual boyfriend, Bell. She becomes the caretaker and confidante to Madame Pig, a besotted, grotesque recluse who lives on memories - or are they fantasies? and red wine. Then Jesse meets Madison - Pig's daughter or lover or both - who uses others' desires for her own purposes and who will take them both beyond any boundaries. Combining the dangerous sexuality of Mary Gaitskill's Bad Behavior and the dark lyricism of Jayne Anne Phillips's Black Tickets, Suicide Blonde is one of the most startling and original novels to appear in years.
"A steamer....The diary of a death wish....'Suicide Blonde' doles out some bitter, valuable lessons."~Jenkyns
"Erotic....Beautifully crafted prose." Parini
Suicide Blonde is the dark, intense, erotic story of a young woman's sexual and psychological odyssey. Set In San Francisco's demimonde of sexually ambiguous, bourbon-drinking, drug-taking outsiders, the novel involves themes of identity, the past's impingement on the present, and sexuality as a common, and now tainted, language. Jesse is a beautiful twenty-nine-year-old woman adrift in a world of confused and forbidden desire, desperately trying to sustain a connection to her bisexual boyfriend, Bell. She becomes the caretaker and confidante to Madame Pig, a besotted, grotesque recluse who lives on memories - or are they fantasies? and red wine. Then Jesse meets Madison - Pig's daughter or lover or both - who uses others' desires for her own purposes and who will take them both beyond any boundaries. Combining the dangerous sexuality of Mary Gaitskill's Bad Behavior and the dark lyricism of Jayne Anne Phillips's Black Tickets, Suicide Blonde is one of the most startling and original novels to appear in years.
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