- Hardcover: 197 pages
- Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; First Edition edition (1 Sep 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679419780
- ISBN-13: 978-0679419785
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 15 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,915,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Following her critically acclaimed collection of short stories, City of Boys, Beth Nugent brings her dark and eerie vision to a powerful first novel.
Live Girls is the story of Catherine, in her twenties, who sells tickets in a run-down porn theater in a decrepit port city, A sign in the window of the seedy hotel where she lives reads Transients Welcome. Her only friend is Jerome, an anorexic drag queen who searches for love among the sailors.
As Catherine and Jerome set out for Hollywood, we witness -with equal horror and fascination -- their desperate attempt to find redemption in a world that offers them so little.
In haunting, stylized prose, Nugent takes us deep into her protagonist's psyche while painting a bizarre -- yet oddly familiar -- picture of a dissociated, disconnected America. Live Girls is a tour de force that will leave no one who reads it unshaken.
Live Girls is the story of Catherine, in her twenties, who sells tickets in a run-down porn theater in a decrepit port city, A sign in the window of the seedy hotel where she lives reads Transients Welcome. Her only friend is Jerome, an anorexic drag queen who searches for love among the sailors.
As Catherine and Jerome set out for Hollywood, we witness -with equal horror and fascination -- their desperate attempt to find redemption in a world that offers them so little.
In haunting, stylized prose, Nugent takes us deep into her protagonist's psyche while painting a bizarre -- yet oddly familiar -- picture of a dissociated, disconnected America. Live Girls is a tour de force that will leave no one who reads it unshaken.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In a world of hankering vices, a languid young mind drifts into reverie. For Nugent's Catherine, reality is translucent, as she mixes dreams with the longing of others. Unaffected and innocent, she befriends the outrageous drag queen Jerome, and together they pursue entities that are beyond their reach. Nugent's style is sublime, her prose trance-like. This novel - as with Nugent's short story collection 'City of Boys' - will ease you into a captivating world of sadness and candour.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As an aspiring writer I have been on a perpetual search for something that "grabs me." My search ended when I discovered Beth Nugent. This novel paints a captivating portrait of a lost soul. Reading her stories, and this particular novel, is like watching an Ingmar Bergman film. It's like watching blue shadows dance upon the wall. She is head to head with Joyce Carol Oates -- in my humble opinion. --Julie Bickley
Format:Paperback
I'm sorry everyone seems to find this such a depressing read. Personally I found that although it's populated with extremely unsympathetic characters, the central figure is someone who actually has a lot of hope - it's just that there's no support from the people around her and she is obviously on a downward spiral of self-inflicted mental pain. Having said that, it's incredibly tightly written and it would be a shame if the bleakness of subject matter and tone prevented people from giving it a chance. Lots of these young Americans don't have an audience here in the UK (it wasn't even published here) but really it would be tragic if they were under-appreciated in their own country. Incidentally, I heartily recommend the short story collection City of Boys too. There are passages in one of the stories, Cocktail Hour, that break my heart.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Morbid, Unfocused, Depressing
I'm all for what I'd call cynical-aesthetic if there seems to be a point to it - if there's a place that it's all leading me towards in terms of understanding human character or... Read more
Published on 23 Oct 1998
The state of the nation
Though I am in my early twenties, I read a lot of contemporary literary fiction. Of the novels I have read in the past year or so, Live Girls really stands out for me as one of the... Read more
Published on 27 Dec 1996
Depressing and pointless.
I *loved* Nugent's prize-winning story, "City of Boys". It's
one of my all-time favorite short stories. Read more
one of my all-time favorite short stories. Read more
Published on 28 May 1996
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