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Kamikaze LustBy Lauren Sanders Winner of a 2000 Lambda Literary Award! Fiction | Trade paperback
A new novel by Lauren Sanders, With or Without You, is forthcoming from Akashic Books in February 2005. Click here to see info on readings for With or Without You "Kamikaze Lust puts a snappy spin on a traditional theme--young woman in search of herself--and stands it on its head. In a crackling, rapid-fire voice studded with deadpan one-liners and evocative descriptions, Rachel Silver takes us to such far-flung places as a pompous charity benefit, the set of an "art porn" movie, her best friend's body, Las Vegas casinos, and the psyche of her own porn-star alter ego, Silver Ray, all knit together by the unspoken question: who am I, anyway? And as Rachel tells it, asking the question is more fun than knowing for sure could ever be." -Kate Christensen, author of In the Drink "Great courage must account for such complete disregard of political correctness, and great sensitivity for such sadness." -Amanda Filipacchi, author of Nude Men Kamikaze Lust takes the reader on an electrifying ride through the spectacle of life and death in millennial America. Smart, hardboiled, and humorous, the novel taps our current obsession with sex and death, sex and popular culture, sex and the written word, sex and pornography, sex and green M&Ms, and, of course, the perennial sex and love. Lauren Sanders is a novelist and journalist who lives in New York City. Her writing has appeared in publications including The American Book Review, Poets & Writers, and Time Out/New York. She is co-editor of the anthology Too Darn Hot: Writing About Sex Since Kinsey, published by Persea Books in 1998. She is a graduate of Columbia University's school of journalism and has an MA in Creative Writing from City College in New York. This past summer, Sanders participated in Jezebelle2000, a 20-city book tour/performance event she co-founded with New York writers Elena Georgiou and Cheryl B. What the critics are saying about Kamikaze Lust: "Like an official conducting an all-out strip search, first-time novelist Lauren Sanders plucks and probes her characters' minds and bodies to reveal their hidden lusts, and when all is said and done, nary a body cavity is spared." Time Out New York "This sexy little novel isn't afraid to be steamy-but it isn't too jaded for romance either." The Advocate "Lauren Sanders is a writer of extraordinary skill." Bay Area Reporter "Without wit or heart, this much sex would be unsexy, particularly if the author were using the titillation factor as mere bait for jacket blurbs. Instead, it serves a broader purpose, illustrating that the boundaries we use to demarcate civilized society are largely an illusion, and that labels like "porn star," "cancer patient," and "lesbian" are meant to signify-falsely-"people nothing like us." Here sex bleeds so naturally into life, and life into sex, that books that shy from this human realm begin to seem prissy and suspect." City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul) "Sanders zips and zooms through Rachel's overturned life with prose as sharp, quick, and deadly as any suicide mission." Out Magazine "The fact that Sanders can so overtly take on sex and death, write almost exclusively of their relationship to each other and their effects on a developing personality, and not sound clichéd, is a monumental achievement in itself." Toronto Star. "Kamikaze Lust is a whirl of New York neurotic fast-quipping with a line or two courtesy of Miss Sandra Bernhardt, but who better to borrow from than the Princess of Pith?" Time Out London Lauren Sanders reads on Salon.com/MP3Lit.com |
