Beauty
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- 5,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Jamie Angelo is part artist and part alchemist. His plastic surgery techniques are light-years beyond modern medicine. He can transform a haggard face into a masterpiece of ageless beauty. He is not God. But he is close.
To ambitious models like Jaishree Manglani, Jamie is the ultimate fantasy-a master illusionist who can turn her dream of eternal youth into reality. Until the truth about Jami's "art" and "science" is revealed, and a nightmare ensues. Because if there's no such thing as perfect beauty, Manhattan's king of beauty might just be the gatekeeper of something other than human.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pygmalion, Dorian Gray, and Frankenstein find a snappy new milieu in this ambitious first novel, which explores art, celebrity, and the cult of physical beauty in present-day New York's downtown scene. Rising art-world star Jamie Angelo works clandestinely in a very controversial medium human flesh. With some scientist buddies from his days at Yale, Jamie has developed a radical form of cosmetic surgery. Harnessing his aesthetic sensibility and his mastery of painting technique, he creates new faces for celebrities and the very wealthy, stripping away unsightly tissue and replacing it with an artificial skin first used on burn victims. Initially, this process is merely restorative, but as his skill and ambition increase, Jamie becomes obsessed with creating the ultimate beauty. His girlfriend, Jaishree, a frustrated performance artist, becomes the clay for his masterpiece. D'Amato writes with aplomb, developing a first-person narrative in Jamie's increasingly neurotic voice that maintains credibility throughout. There are some uneasy shifts between lofty theoretical discussion and the argot of downtown phrases like "megally beat" and the theorizing itself sometimes waxes sophomoric. The frequent invocation of pop-culture icons and actual figures from the art world also becomes a bit tiresome and blunts the novel's satirical edge. Still, this literate, postmodern grab bag of weird insights and compelling themes marks an auspicious debut.
