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lisa_shobhana's review
5.0
this is the best novel i've read in a decade or more! it's a charming story about an eccentric group of kids and their families living (and dying) in los angeles. it wavers between gritty and heartbreaking, and magical with a touch of the sort of fantasy that great films are made of. it reads like a film (and was penned by a screenwriter). i savored every page and was sorry to see it come to an end. it's a gem!
sophiahelix's review
5.0
I read this in college and happily it is just as fantastic as I remembered. The ultra-rich and the starving poor in modern-day Beverly Hills, bitter screenwriters, children who charter their own round-the-world private jet trip and stop off at Easter Island, a brilliant, snarky, deformed ten year old boy who sews his own hoods, cousin-on-cousin incest, a crackhead's daughter who's obsessed with becoming a Jewish saint just like her hero Edith Stein and who cycles through a series of horrible foster homes, a man who's been living under the delusion that he is William Morris the Enlightenment-era textile designer and writer, and all the descriptions of designer clothing and life on the streets of LA you could ask for, plus a great dane named Pullman.
And it has an ENDING. Not the most perfect one, but unlike almost all the mainstream fiction I've read recently, it doesn't either cut out abruptly or add in a new storyline only to finish it off in fifteen pages instead of the hundred it needs. The storylines wind to gentle conclusions with a brief coda that works, and I came away feeling both a little happier and a little sadder.
And it has an ENDING. Not the most perfect one, but unlike almost all the mainstream fiction I've read recently, it doesn't either cut out abruptly or add in a new storyline only to finish it off in fifteen pages instead of the hundred it needs. The storylines wind to gentle conclusions with a brief coda that works, and I came away feeling both a little happier and a little sadder.
the_lilypad's review
1.0
There were three Bruce Wagner books on my list. The first one I read was ok. I hated the second one, and this was just too much. I got to chapter six and I’m just done. I just am really not into the writing, it doesn’t do it for me :(
kaxla's review against another edition
4.0
I loved this book when I read it a few years ago. Upon reread I found it a little pretentious, but still good.
sophiahelix's review against another edition
5.0
I read this in college and happily it is just as fantastic as I remembered. The ultra-rich and the starving poor in modern-day Beverly Hills, bitter screenwriters, children who charter their own round-the-world private jet trip and stop off at Easter Island, a brilliant, snarky, deformed ten year old boy who sews his own hoods, cousin-on-cousin incest, a crackhead's daughter who's obsessed with becoming a Jewish saint just like her hero Edith Stein and who cycles through a series of horrible foster homes, a man who's been living under the delusion that he is William Morris the Enlightenment-era textile designer and writer, and all the descriptions of designer clothing and life on the streets of LA you could ask for, plus a great dane named Pullman.
And it has an ENDING. Not the most perfect one, but unlike almost all the mainstream fiction I've read recently, it doesn't either cut out abruptly or add in a new storyline only to finish it off in fifteen pages instead of the hundred it needs. The storylines wind to gentle conclusions with a brief coda that works, and I came away feeling both a little happier and a little sadder.
And it has an ENDING. Not the most perfect one, but unlike almost all the mainstream fiction I've read recently, it doesn't either cut out abruptly or add in a new storyline only to finish it off in fifteen pages instead of the hundred it needs. The storylines wind to gentle conclusions with a brief coda that works, and I came away feeling both a little happier and a little sadder.
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