Toxicology - Hardcover

Hagedorn, Jessica

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670022578 ISBN 13: 9780670022571

Publisher: Viking, 2011

Synopsis

A bold new novel about the intersection of art, love, fame, and money from the acclaimed author of Dogeaters.

Jessica Hagedorn's edgy and entertaining new novel centers on the lives of two women who are neighbors in Manhattan's West Village. Mimi Smith is a filmmaker of low-budget slasher movies in search of new material. Her neighbor Eleanor Delacroix is a legendary writer of erotic fiction, now nearing eighty and addicted to cocaine and gin. Their personal and artistic lives begin to collide in unexpected ways as Eleanor grieves over the recent death of her live-in lover, the renowned painter Yvonne Wilder, and as Mimi deals with the challenges presented by her newly sober brother Carmelo; her drug-dealing boyfriend, who has mysteriously disappeared; and her wayward fourteen-year-old daughter, Violet. Looming over all these characters is the ghost of Agnes-an "illegal" and cousin of Mimi's who might have been murdered by her New Jersey employers. Toxicology is a dark yet playful exploration of money, desire, mortality, and the connection between creativity and self-destruction.

About this title

About the Author:

Jessica Hagedorn is the author of the novels Dogeaters and The Gangster of Love, Dream Jungle, and a collection of poetry and short fiction, Danger and Beauty.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Keenly alert to the mesh of pop culture and life, audacious, multitalented Hagedorn (Dream Jungle, 2003) investigates New Yorks art and film mystique in an edgy, speedy tale that launches with the shocking death of a Heath Ledgerlike actor. Chaos-on-wheels and flat-broke filmmaker Mimi joins the crowd gathering on the street outside his brownstone, tiny video camera in hand. A stylish slasher film earned her some cachet, but shes now desperate. Her dealer-lover has vanished, and shes out of cocaine. Her intractable 14-year-old daughter has left her father to move in with Mimi and her dying dog, and Mimis alcoholic brother, Carmelo, is certain that their cousin Agnes, an illegal immigrant, has been murdered. Time to call on Mimis wealthy, gin-besotted cokehead neighbor across the hall. Eleanor, 80, is a reclusive cult writer infamous for her lesbian erotica. Mourning the death of her lover, Yvonne, a famous painter, she is surprised to be experiencing a modest revival. As angry, foulmouthed, and jittery Mimi runs amok and Eleanor confronts the obdurate facts of old age, Hagedorn flashes back to their traumatic pasts of ostracism and political violence. Out of jump cuts and close-ups, Hagedorn has composed a jazzy, stingingly smart tragicomedy of toxic substances, hate, and delusions; hustle and creativity; obsession and passion. --Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0670022578
• ISBN 13: 9780670022571
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240