The Story of Junk
A Novel
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
Witty, terrifying, and utterly cool, Yablonsky’s roman à clef is a searing, hyperreal account of the heroin underground in 1980s Manhattan
Told with dark humor and unremitting honesty, Linda Yablonsky’s riveting first novel explores the New York art and postpunk music world of the early 1980s from deep within. Set in motion by the appearance of a federal agent, the tale follows two women on a dangerous and seductive journey through a bohemia where hard drugs, extreme behavior, intense friendships, and the emergence of AIDS profoundly alter their lives.
“[The Story of Junk] is a fascinating account—sometimes joyful, sometimes harrowing, always brimming with love—of life at the edge of one’s soul, and it’s told with talent and remarkable empathy.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Yablonsky’s rendering of the drug scene on the Lower East Side is almost surreal in its nihilistic intensity, and her descriptions of the euphoria heroin grants, ‘a sublime nausea, . . . a leap beyond fate, a divine embrace,’ are at once terrifying and seductive. An unsparing yet witty and tender novel with an unmistakable aura of truth.” —Booklist
“Like a grisly car accident that you can’t tear your eyes from, Yablonsky’s gripping [novel] . . . tells an unglamorous, yet oddly seductive, tale that is by turns charming and horrifying. . . . Highly recommended.” —Library Journal
Since publishing her acclaimed first novel, The Story of Junk, in 1997, Linda Yablonsky has enthralled readers with her globetrotting reports from the front lines of the contemporary art world. Her byline has appeared in Artforum and T: The New York Times Style Magazine online and in print, as well as in the New York Times, the Art Newspaper, W, Elle, and Wallpaper, among many others. From 1991 to 1999 Yablonsky organized and hosted Nightlight Readings and Nightlight for Kids, innovative writers-in-performance series that introduced new work by more than two hundred authors to a broad audience in New York, where she lives. Yablonsky was also the founding producer for MoMA PS1’s pioneering Internet radio station, WPS1, and until 2009, senior art critic for Bloomberg News in the United States.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in New York City, Naples, Bangkok and elsewhere during the 1980s, this stark but engrossing story of heroin addiction reads like a ripped-from-the-headlines-made-for-TV movie. The narrator, Laura, who comes from an upper-middle-class background, is fatally drawn to the glitterati of New York City. Initially an aspiring writer who supports herself by cooking in a restaurant, she progresses from hanger-on to addict to dealer and finds herself spiraling down and out with girlfriend and lover, Kit, a rock musician. The surrounding cast of characters includes Laura's father and stepmother, who can't begin to fathom the depth of Laura's hell; Honey and Grigorio, the "perfect couple'' whose loyalty proves stronger than the ravages of their degradation; Angelo, the ruthless dealer who will always shadow Laura for turning state's evidence. This is not a multidimensional novel or a nuanced one, but it is striking for the strong, often comic powers of observation Yablonski gives Laura, who describes the powerful whirlpool that sucks her down. The passages evoking the anguish of deprivation and the temporary surcease heroin provides anchor the narrative. But while Yablonski conveys the degradation of an addict's life, the narrative lapses into sentimentality and a certain vagueness about how Laura can consider addicts the "best people I ever knew'' if their precious friendships spoil when the feds close in. Arguably, it's just this emptiness and lack of self-knowledge that she has tried to fill with drugs. For those who can stomach the graphically described junkie scenes, this fiercely candid debut will be a gripping experience. FYI: Yablonsky is the host of a literary series called Nightline Readings in New York. Her documentary, Addicted, will air on cable TV.
