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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
relaxing
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
All the reviewers commenting on how little sex and rage there are in this book are totally right! I like her writing style and this book surprised me a bit because it starts off with Babitz’s typical chaotic protagonist who seems like she’s headed for a major crash into a brick wall due to her LA lifestyle in the 70s. It’s a different take on the whole writer coming to NYC trope. She heads to NYC a total mess and then she sheds all that chaos and the story ends with her literally flying off into the sunset back to her beloved California all dewy and doe eyed.
3.5 stars really
hard to not love an eve babitz book tbh, this one took awhile but the second half ultimately hooked me in
makes you get self reflective as you watch jacaranda second guess herself a million times, and fall back into bad habits/patterns. i love how lazily eve babitz’s writing reads through a lot of this book, it adds to the charm and the overall feeling of being lost in your 20s
hard to not love an eve babitz book tbh, this one took awhile but the second half ultimately hooked me in
makes you get self reflective as you watch jacaranda second guess herself a million times, and fall back into bad habits/patterns. i love how lazily eve babitz’s writing reads through a lot of this book, it adds to the charm and the overall feeling of being lost in your 20s
Listened to the audio book. This was a recommended book over at Belletrist.
Maybe I would have a different experience reading it instead. There is some fine writing here, but I couldn't gather any sympathy for Jacaranda. Slightly boring.
However, Mia Barron was a great choice for the narration.
Maybe I would have a different experience reading it instead. There is some fine writing here, but I couldn't gather any sympathy for Jacaranda. Slightly boring.
However, Mia Barron was a great choice for the narration.
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i enjoyed this read quite a lot. it is my first babitz, and knowing what i know about her so far, i can see how autobiographical it is, and i think that vulnerability makes it special to me.
this is marketed as a “coming of age” story, but i found it to be a story primarily about a young woman’s struggle with alcoholism and drug use while centering men’s approval. which is coming of age to some, yes, but i think i say it’s just a story of growing up makes the actual substance of the book sound watered down. it is deeply relatable to those it’s relatable too, but i wouldn’t necessarily consider this a relatable read across the board.
i agree with the reviews that say this book reads like a stream of consciousness. it’s not very prose-like, almost a more factual observation of what jacaranda is doing or saying. that isn’t my preferred style, but i thought it set the tone for the book.
i also appreciated that the story was written in slightly different tones as her alcoholism progresses, then as her sobriety shakily begins. i loved the occasional snarky satirical comments, especially the ones that made jacaranda the butt of the joke (example, the reference that jacaranda would understand her euphoria highs and then crying spells lows if only she would just go to AA).
i thought the arc was very beautiful, with the last page perfectly mirroring the girl we met who loved surfing and life on the first page.
one thing i didn’t love was that the narrator was 95% focused on jacaranda, but every once and a while it would head hop to another character for a paragraph or two. that’s my pet peeve in reading, so those few times made me feel pulled out.
i also didn’t enjoy reading the bulk of part 1, but i think that was more of a personal experience thing than it being hard to read generally. my enjoyment skyrocketed when part 2 began and her journey to new york started. and, i think we needed the vanity and self centeredness and self harm of part 1 to fully appreciate her changes in part 2.
this book also reminded me of malibu rising by TJR.
this is marketed as a “coming of age” story, but i found it to be a story primarily about a young woman’s struggle with alcoholism and drug use while centering men’s approval. which is coming of age to some, yes, but i think i say it’s just a story of growing up makes the actual substance of the book sound watered down. it is deeply relatable to those it’s relatable too, but i wouldn’t necessarily consider this a relatable read across the board.
i agree with the reviews that say this book reads like a stream of consciousness. it’s not very prose-like, almost a more factual observation of what jacaranda is doing or saying. that isn’t my preferred style, but i thought it set the tone for the book.
i also appreciated that the story was written in slightly different tones as her alcoholism progresses, then as her sobriety shakily begins. i loved the occasional snarky satirical comments, especially the ones that made jacaranda the butt of the joke (example, the reference that jacaranda would understand her euphoria highs and then crying spells lows if only she would just go to AA).
i thought the arc was very beautiful, with the last page perfectly mirroring the girl we met who loved surfing and life on the first page.
one thing i didn’t love was that the narrator was 95% focused on jacaranda, but every once and a while it would head hop to another character for a paragraph or two. that’s my pet peeve in reading, so those few times made me feel pulled out.
i also didn’t enjoy reading the bulk of part 1, but i think that was more of a personal experience thing than it being hard to read generally. my enjoyment skyrocketed when part 2 began and her journey to new york started. and, i think we needed the vanity and self centeredness and self harm of part 1 to fully appreciate her changes in part 2.
this book also reminded me of malibu rising by TJR.
To say that Sex & Rage is divisive in it's reviews would be an understatement. Scrolling through Goodreads is a whiplash of 1-star reviews calling it painfully dull and the 5-star reviews applauding it as the best thing ever written. I was in the middle.
I, admittedly, have never been farther west than Nevada and was born far after the height of rock n' roll but if someone told me that Babitz captured Laurel Canyon perfectly in these pages I wouldn't doubt them! I felt swept away in 60s- 70s L.A. - shag rugs, bellbottoms, and all. We follow Jacaranda as she falls victim to the vices of mid-century California to the point that she falls into success and pulls herself back together. Babitz's language (and likely personal experience) makes this story an appetizing one to follow and get lost in. Babitz's tendency to self-insert was an interesting device (when Jacaranda first goes to Max's penthouse and sees a photo of a naked woman and Marcel Duchamp playing chess with each other, she's directly mentioning a photo that exists of herself and Marcel Duchamp playing chess together). It wasn't distracting but made me question where Jacaranda began and where Eve ended. I will say that I didn't 'get' Max or what the hang-up was with him. Maybe it was the little touch of fame and wealth that Jacaranda couldn't quite shake but, I couldn't understand why he became such a huge plot point when Jacaranda herself was an enticing enough character.
I can definitely see myself reading more Babitz in the future.
I, admittedly, have never been farther west than Nevada and was born far after the height of rock n' roll but if someone told me that Babitz captured Laurel Canyon perfectly in these pages I wouldn't doubt them! I felt swept away in 60s- 70s L.A. - shag rugs, bellbottoms, and all. We follow Jacaranda as she falls victim to the vices of mid-century California to the point that she falls into success and pulls herself back together. Babitz's language (and likely personal experience) makes this story an appetizing one to follow and get lost in. Babitz's tendency to self-insert was an interesting device (when Jacaranda first goes to Max's penthouse and sees a photo of a naked woman and Marcel Duchamp playing chess with each other, she's directly mentioning a photo that exists of herself and Marcel Duchamp playing chess together). It wasn't distracting but made me question where Jacaranda began and where Eve ended. I will say that I didn't 'get' Max or what the hang-up was with him. Maybe it was the little touch of fame and wealth that Jacaranda couldn't quite shake but, I couldn't understand why he became such a huge plot point when Jacaranda herself was an enticing enough character.
I can definitely see myself reading more Babitz in the future.
My first Babitz, and I really deeply loved this. The prose is so descriptive and alive. Babitz’s portrait of Los Angeles in the 1970s here is glamorous and intoxicating, but she finds a way to show us its cracks, its sleazy slimy darkness, in the exact same breath. The two never feel contradictory. Jacaranda (an Eve Babitz stand in) dives into and then escapes a toxic social circle of powerful men and the women they surround themselves with, resulting in some genuinely interesting discussion of alcoholism and addiction. The scenes in New York in the second half of the novel are delightful fish out of water moments. I highlighted so many incredible sentences in this book while reading digitally, and feel like I will need to purchase a copy so that I can annotate again!
adventurous
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“See… your problems hardly last fifteen minutes once you don’t take no for an answer.”
I’m mystified by all the negative reviews of this book. I get that disjointed musings from messy women with hardly any plot are not for everyone… but are people SO dense that they can’t recognize a cutting sense of humor when they see one?? why are we assuming that women are incapable of reflective self-satirization?
if you understand this book, good for you! if you hate it, keep it to yourself
I’m mystified by all the negative reviews of this book. I get that disjointed musings from messy women with hardly any plot are not for everyone… but are people SO dense that they can’t recognize a cutting sense of humor when they see one?? why are we assuming that women are incapable of reflective self-satirization?
if you understand this book, good for you! if you hate it, keep it to yourself
the cover, title, and the final 20 or so pages are by far the most compelling parts of Sex & Rage. unfortunately, the rest feels lacking in substance beyond being self-referential to Babitz. I don’t mind a plotless story so long as it’s well written, but I found the writing distractingly bad ?? and the characters frustratingly underdeveloped. my favorite moments came at the end, in Jacaranda’s conversations with Wini and Sonia in New York. these exchanges felt the most real and capture something particular about conversations and reflections among women. anyway this is definitely my harshest review to date, so my apologies to Eve, but this was just disappointing