I'd wondered if this would happen:
An additional 2,500 copies have been commissioned for “Story of My Life,” according to Vintage Books, a paperback imprint of Random House, Inc. The book, first released in 1988, is narrated by a promiscuous, aspiring actress whom [Jay] McInerney has said was inspired by [Rielle] Hunter — then named Lisa Druck — and a group of friends the author had met in New York. (Charlotte Observer)
I pulled my copy off the shelf Friday night since I remembered very little about the book--wasn't there something about a horse, something designed to make the reader feel a bit of compassion for this awful girl? Or was that the story of my life, always focusing on the horse, dating all the way back to my Black Beauty days?-- and I hadn't liked it nearly as well as the told-in-the-second-person Bright Lights, Big City. And thumbing through it I remembered a conversation I'd had with a fellow classmate in '93, who'd confessed to a monumental crush on Alison Poole but could not adequately explain the why of that crush in a way that I could understand.
I still don't understand.
A bang, not a whimper
Two months into L.'s retirement, and I'm finished with the stockpiling of books. No more book purchases! Or at least, no purcha...
-
(See also Musee des Beaux Arts ) As far as mental anguish goes, the old painters were no fools. They understood how the mind, the freakiest ...
-
When I finished Kevin Brockmeier's A Brief History of the Dead last spring I immediately did a search to see if the Coca-Cola Corp. had...
It was OK, but I thought it seemed flat after Bright Lights, Big City, which I really enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteI read it twice, once when I was in my "sowing wild oats" phase, and once after that was all done. Self-destructing Alison reminded me of myself, if I'd been a rich New Yorker. The Alison on the cover of the book even looked eerily like me. It may not be a "good" book, but it made an impression, and stays on my shelf because of that.
ReplyDelete