Life After Death and Other Stories

The cutting edge of the post-punk Los Angeles scene is captured in a collection of sixteen stories and a novella that chronicle the interconnected, alienated lives of a dozen young members of that scene

From her background in the Los Angeles punk scene as publisher of her own fanzine, Compo creates a weird and wonderful trip into the post-punk subculture, written in precise, witty, unflinching prose. Each of the book's three sections presents a variation on the young characters' search for meaning in music, relationships, religion and ritual. Concern with image prevails in the novella "Life After Death" in which Zelda Zonk, a Marilyn Monroe-lookalike, gets her boyfriend Vex, a David Bowie idolizer, to join her quest to retrieve Marilyn's diary. Sudden, amusing plot twists and coincidental meetings are used again in "Wallpaper," a series of 11 vignettes about characters with intertwining relationships, including monologues from Alma, a writer, that frame her "romance stories about people who can't love." The stories deal with the importance of image and its conflict with reality; the attraction of religion, especially Catholicism, to the often-superstitious punkers; and the giving and taking involved in love. The final section, "Never an Autumn but Always a Fall,' highlights the problems of love--love passed by, and love as obsession; love ending theatrically and love ending sordidly. Compo's sympathetic, often tongue-in-cheek insights make an exciting collage.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Compo peoples her stories with interconnected, insecure, punk-rock characters who affect unreal names and bizarre clothes. Seeking love and friendship, they lead a vacuous existence taking drugs, listening to reggae music, and idolizing real-life stars of stage and screen who occupied the limelight, however briefly. Their relationships are transitory, their feelings are superficial. They pursue undirected, self-destructive activities that one character, Nicole, believes demonstrate control. Compo's unappealing people lead empty lives that she describes capably in a chatty, colloquial style. For the most part, however, Cruella and her husband, Orange; the Boy no Wonder; the True Money Girls; Vex; and Zelda Zonk should stay in L.A. where they'll find others of their kind.
-Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.