The Celibacy Club: Amazon.de: Janice Eidus: Englische Bücher

Taschenbuch: 199 Seiten
Verlag: City Lights (Februar 1997)
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN-10: 0872863220
ISBN-13: 978-0872863224
Gr��e und/oder Gewicht: 2 x 1,3 x 0,2 cm

Durchschnittliche Kundenbewertung: 5.0 von 5 Sternen Alle Rezensionen anzeigen (7 Kundenrezensionen)

Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 1.918.684 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)

M�chten Sie die Produktinformationen aktualisieren oder Feedback zu den Produktabbildungen geben?

Ist der Verkauf dieses Produkts f�r Sie nicht akzeptabel?

Entdecken Sie B�cher, lesen Sie �ber Autoren und mehr

› Besuchen Sie die Seite von Janice Eidus auf Amazon

Amazon.com

In "Gypsy Lore," one of 19 stories in Janice Eidus's new collection, The Celibacy Club, 15-year-old Anna asks a fortune teller about sex. "He comes in, he goes out. He comes in, he goes out. That's all," the gypsy replies. The gypsy's evident ennui about sex might apply just as easily to this collection itself, in which a lot happens but nothing much matters. In the title story, Nancy joins a celibacy club where everyone talks about why they're not having sex. Then she has sex with one of the club members, quits the club and buys a condo in the Bronx. In "Making Love, Making Movies" screenwriter Jeff inexplicably starts cheating on his wife of ten years, an actress obsessed with Sigourney Weaver. During each affair he casts himself as a different Hollywood actor, while each encounter becomes a scenario for yet another trite film cliché in his hackneyed mind.

Ms. Eidus's tales are often amusing, but she tends to substitute pop culture references for character development, and high concept ideas, i.e., a Barbie doll goes to group therapy, for theme. Still, readers who enjoy this type of ultra-hip urban story-telling may well find The Celibacy Club entertaining reading.

From Kirkus Reviews

Most of the 19 stories here have been published in small magazines, and a number anthologized. This isn't surprising: Eidus's tales (Vito Loves Geraldine, 1990, etc.) often seem either written to order or just not weighty enough for more mainstream venues. The author's jokier tales poke fun at familiar targets: the therapeutic culture; health clubs; and the shallowness of Hollywood. Eidus also mocks our obsession with celebrity in a series of pieces about pop icons: In ``Elvis, Axl, and Me,'' a former mental patient discovers Elvis alive and well, living in the Bronx as an Hasidic Jew; in ``Barbie Goes to Group Therapy,'' a group of whiny women seek revenge on the doll they blame for their unhappiness; and in ``Jimmy Dean: My Kind of Guy,'' the narrator sleeps with the dreamy actor who's still alive and writing a play at an artists' colony. False hope, the loss of innocence, and nostalgia for a lost childhood all figure into other stories such as ``The Mermaid of Orchard Beach,'' in which a Bronx girl discovers her ability to create her own reality and to fashion happiness from ``what was really so very little.'' Similarly, a woman who believed in the power of goodness as a child can't understand why her mean and nasty sister (and not she) has achieved wealth and happiness as an adult (``The Princess of Lake Forest''). The least successful stories take themselves far too seriously and are written with a sledgehammer sensibility: a portrait of a phone- sex worker and her childhood history of sexual abuse (``Pandora's Box''); ``Ladies with Long Hair,'' about a group of women who refuse to cut their hair in solidarity with those dying from AIDS; and a disposable bit of advocacy on condom use (``Aunt Lulu, the Condom Lady''). A few self-reflexive pieces about writers add nothing to an altogether artless second collection. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Alle Produktbeschreibungen

Wenn Sie ein Verleger oder Autor sind und die digitalen Rechte an einem Buch haben, k�nnen Sie die digitale Version des Buchs in unserem Kindle-Shop verkaufen. Weitere Informationen

Kunden diskutieren

Das Forum zu diesem Produkt

Diskussion	Antworten	J�ngster Beitrag
Noch keine Diskussionen

Fragen stellen, Meinungen austauschen, Einblicke gewinnen

Neue Diskussion starten

Thema:

Erster Beitrag:

Bei neuen Eintr�gen E-Mail erhalten

Eingabe des Log-ins

Richtlinien

Aktive Diskussionen in �hnlichen Foren

Diskussion	Antworten	J�ngster Beitrag
Forum: englische b�cher Suche engl. B�cher mit denen ich die Sprache besser erlerne	7	Vor einer Stunde
Forum: englische b�cher Aktuell kostenlose Kindle-B�cher in franz�sisch	9	Vor 2 Stunden
Forum: englische b�cher Meet Our Authors	116	Vor 4 Stunden
Forum: englische b�cher We can get a book for free? Great! Please post here!	43	Vor 12 Stunden
Forum: englische b�cher Utopia/Dystopia	10	Gestern
Forum: englische b�cher Welches englische Buch lest Ihr zur Zeit?	236	Vor 2 Tagen
Forum: englische b�cher it. girl band 6	1	Vor 4 Tagen
Forum: englische b�cher American Based Thriller Writers Please Post	117	Vor 5 Tagen

Kundendiskussionen durchsuchen

�hnliche Foren

Forum: englische b�cher (530 Diskussionen)

Legen Sie Ihre eigene Lieblingsliste an

Kundenrezensionen

5 Sterne

4 Sterne

3 Sterne

2 Sterne

1 Sterne

7 Rezensionen

5.0 von 5 Sternen

Kundenrezension verfassen

Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen

Compelling desires 25. Juni 2000

Von Ein Kunde

Format:Taschenbuch

In The Celibacy Club, you'll meet rock stars, a mermaid, a vampire, a cat princess, and even a sexy piece of fitness equipment. The moral is: No matter how much banana cream pie you eat, you can't restrain desire. So don't hold back. Read these stories! --Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Roughhouse

Kommentar |

War diese Rezension f�r Sie hilfreich?

Nein

Illuminating Worlds 6. Juni 2000

Von marcia lipson

Janice Eidus' collection, The Celibacy Club, contains beautifully written short stories inhabited by characters whose lives reveal whole worlds at once familiar and strange. From Elvis, in "Elvis, Axl,and Me," disguised as a Hasid in the Bronx happily eating chicken soup, to Karen, a lonely second-grader in "The Mermaid of Orchard Beach," who learns to sing from a creature not usually found in the five boroughs of New York City, to Jimmy Dean, who shows up at an artists' colony intent on writing a play in "Jimmy Dean: My Kind of Guy," these stories are about people whose identities shift, as do the truths that illuminate them. Eidus has a deft hand for dialogue, a brillant comic sense, and the power to display her characters' passions, both erotic and spiritual. This is a wonderful book.

Celibacy Club is clever fun 16. Mai 2000

Von Dustin Michael

Janice Eidus's The Celibacy Club is an incredible collection of short stories. Eidus weaves into her tales a masterful blend of dark humor, harsh reality, and sarcasm, all with an underlying tone of hope. Although many of her stories are set against the gritty New York City backdrop where the author grew up, they have a remarkable universality and can be easily understood and related to by readers everywhere. In the title story, a young woman vows herself abstinent and becomes a member of a curious little group of celibates that meets in a small Bronx apartment. Things are working out fine, until the lady develops a crush on the wealthy and dashing bachelor who carpools to the meetings with her! Witty and bizarre characters engage each other in vibrant dialogue throughout the book, but it is Eidus's ability to write inner monologues for her characters that makes them so endearing. The stories are a keyhole into the characters' heads through which there is just enough room for peeking. They often take a sort of "journal entry" tone, as if the reader is snooping through the characters' diaries. In all nineteen of her stories, Eidus makes sure the reader is along for the ride, making them a companion to her characters, a confidant, or a sounding board through her characters' journeys for transcendence out of the grimy inner city world they inhabit. After reading The Celibacy Club, one is likely to feel jolted by discovering the boundaries of his or her surroundings, the dreadful normalcy of it all. At the same time, readers will be uplifted that there are, as The Celibacy Club's characters demonstrate, ways to make the routine a little more interesting. With sex, drugs, Elvis and Axl, there is never a dull moment.