Review by Booklist Review
Who else but Babitz could devise the consummate metaphor for life in L.A., comparing it to epilepsy--"full of grand malls and `petit' ones." These stories possess more than a ring of truth--they offer vicarious thrills. Picture a funny but trendy bistro where it's impossible not to overhear the conversation at the next table between a couple of arty types. Or imagine two people embarking on a romantic interlude at the Chateau Marmont, unaware that the Rodney King verdict has released half the population of Los Angeles into the streets. The important thing is, Babitz doesn't rely on manipulating language or fabricating realities. She renders dead-perfect scenarios of contemporary angst, generously imbued with wit and her characters' hard-won wisdom. ~--Alice Joyce
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The subject of these nine stories by Babitz ( Sex and Rage ) is Hollywood: brilliant and beautiful couples who somehow get along; charming yet moody men and their odd needs; and ``Eve,'' the narrator, who cautiously reveals in herself the vices of a naughty but not really bad girl--impulsiveness, casual sex, former drug use, vanity, an obsession with vegetarianism and aging (she's approaching 50), and a preference for cats over children. She's warm and ingratiating, and bent on reaping admiration for her good taste and her sex appeal. But her signature style is the gushing faucet: ``I never wondered if I was a lesbian because usually I only had sex with men and only slept with Vicky because she was so beautiful, and in those days anyone beautiful who pushed me backwards onto a bed, got my full attention.'' Too bad. It's a deep reach to get much more than droll entertainment from these stories. Since values, for Babitz, are seemingly no more than attitudes, she has no basis (and evidently no stomach) for even the gentlest satire, contenting herself instead mostly with flakiness and fun, despite her attempts to confront AIDS in one story (``Free Tibet'') and the L.A. riots in another (``Weird August''). (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Babitz (Sex and Rage, 1979; L.A. Woman, 1982, etc.) is an acquired taste: her slewing style, bad-girl postures, and sad-funny takes on hedonism can be deliciously shocking but don't always blend-up right. Here, though, as the narrator of these nine story/essays, approaches middle-age--after all the drugs, booze, groupie sex, and wild passionate flings--the sense of brakes applied (by 12-step-programs and simple aging) turns Babitz's voice sage as well as outrageous. A number of the pieces revolve around the L.A.-based narrator's weakness for visiting male New York writers; in the best of these, the title one, an effervescent affair is ruined when the narrator dares get something she wrote published for the first time (``Normal men aren't going to love anyone who looks forward to anything but them''). Yet as dispensed as Babitz's people try to be, they never are far from their fears and insecurities--and her wisecracking, ain't-it-the-truth-honey voice is just about perfect in illuminating the fact. Equally good, if somewhat labored (Babitz's chief stylistic flaw is repetitiousness), is a pair of pieces about learning to tango, being swept up in the dance's ``fearless wrongness'': funny, philosophical (``Nobody `got on with their life' in Tango Argentina; they preferred suffering in hell for all eternity''), and with desperate polish. Babitz's best book yet.
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