Description:
An intensely erotic story of a young woman's sexual and psychological odyssey "a provocative tour through the dark side". (Vanity Fair)
Was it the bourbon or the dye fumes that made the pink walls quiver like vaginal lips?
A modern cult classic as startling, original, and vital as it was when first published at the height of the grunge era, Darcey Steinke's sensational Suicide Blonde has lost none of its raw charge.
Jesse is a beautiful twenty-nine-year-old adrift in San Francisco's demimonde of sexually ambiguous, drug-taking outsiders, desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend Bell. She becomes caretaker and confidante to Madame Pig, a grotesque, besotted recluse. Jesse also meets Madison, Pig's daughter or lover or both, who uses others' desires for her own purposes, and who leads Jesse into a world beyond all boundaries.
Review Quotes:
Praise for Suicide Blonde
"Erotic . . . beautifully crafted prose."--Time
"Hallucinatory, dystopian . . . a disturbing, poisonous fable of the dire consequences of derailed passion."--New York Times
"The diary of a death wish . . . Suicide Blonde doles out some bitter, valuable lessons."--New Yorker
"Steinke has a diabolical grasp of the willfulness of decadence, the ambiguity of sexuality, and the transmutability of identity. . . . [Suicide Blonde is an] electrifying tale with the ambience of a Warhol or John Waters film. Edgy and powerful stuff."--Booklist
"Suicide Blonde is in the tradition of Djuna Barnes, Georges Bataille, and Marguerite Duras. It's about . . . the part of town where you're not supposed to go, beauty where there shouldn't be any."--Robert Olmstead