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Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz
4.0

Babitz has a way with words and a way with character. This--an odd little novel about a California girl's brushes with money, celebrity, and substance abuse--is supremely clever in its subtlety. Each little climax fizzles out in confusion and disappointment, characters persistently misunderstand each other, and the loose ends are, more often than not, left loose. As fiction goes, it's defiantly realistic in that sense, a testament to the fact that real life often refuses to satisfy the way the movies do. But there's something satisfying in that lack of satisfaction, and the story ends on an optimistic note, stubbornly uncinematic but suggestive of second chances, unlikely and maybe undeserved--a fitting conclusion for a colorful fable of 20th-century survival.