Product Description

A searing, indelible love story of two ravaged spirits--a screenwriter and an actress-- played out under the merciless, magnifying prism of Hollywood.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #218824 in Books
• Published on: 1992-03-10
• Released on: 1992-03-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780679735939
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Before he is fully awake, Gordon Walker, intellectual manque, failed playwright in his 40s and modestly successful screenwriter-actor, has already consumed his daily hits of valium, alcohol and cocaine. "Stoned, abandoned, desolate," he is a melancholy case, teetering at the edge of the precipice; his wife has fled, his children are estranged, he feels desperately alone. Bereft, he goes to Mexico, where his old love Les Verger, a gifted actress who is herself in thrall to dope, drink and episodic madness, is shooting a picture Walker wrote. From the beginning, the air is filled with portent. Their meeting is delayed, and with each intervening event, the tension and sense of impending doom mount. When they do meet, they will be left to the mercies of their flayed nerves and their inner ruin. The tale is swiftly and expertly told; the momentum is headlong, swirling; the talk stunning, spinning out of its energies and one crackling scene after another. There can be no mistaking that this is the work of a formidably gifted writer. 40,000 first printing; BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Adrift since his wife left him, tasting "death and ruin," screenwriter Gordon Walker needs "a little something to get by on" beyond alcohol and cocaine; so he seeks out his old lover LuAnne, an actress on location in Mexico where she's filming Walker's script of Kate Chopin's The Awakening. A "true" artist who works "without a net," schizophrenic LuAnne is on the verge of a breakdown. Walker survives their explosive reunion and saves himself, but LuAnne acts out her carefully fore shadowed fate. Moviemakingimages of dark and light, illusion and inven tionis the metaphorical frame for this intense, symbolic novel that dramatizes a moral vision of violence and evil in a world where "Things don't work out . . . . They just be. Powerful fic tion by the author of Dog Soldiers , which won the National Book Award in 1975. Janet Wiehe, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap
A searing, indelible love story of two ravaged spirits--a screenwriter and an actress-- played out under the merciless, magnifying prism of Hollywood.

Customer Reviews

stunningly bleak vision of the human condition
This novel is my favorite of all of Stone's disturbing and powerful works (I haven't read "Outerbridge Reach" yet). It's so beautifully and evocatively written that I somehow find the roll of the prose soothing and pleasurable, despite the all but unbearable sadness and desperation of the characters. I still, after several rereadings, find myself puzzled and disturbed that these characters can't get their acts together, act so selfishly, have so little self-control and respect for one another--just like people in real life, unfortunately. (Certainly in Stone's view, and I suppose also in mine). Drugs, booze, insanity, and cruelty abound, and are not punished. As the unforgettable conclusion reveals, there is ultimately no justice for these characters--they either survive or they don't. This is Stone's harshly beautiful world at its best, in my opinion.

Love at first sight
This was the first book by Robert Stone I read. Damscus Gate was the second, though I prefer Children of Light.

Stone's mind, his craft as a writer and a narrator, drew me into the story from the outset. In spite of the bleak, unrelenting theme, it is the writing above all-- the quality of the insights, the invention, and the prose, so economical and searing in its images -- that left me inspired.

Some memorable moments were the letter Gordon receives from his son and his interpretation of it; the scene on the mountaintop with Lee Verger -- Malcolm Lowry and Stone would have gotten along well.The scene with the doctor in Mexico, when Gordon seeks drugs, was also well depicted -- the doctor's observations of his screen world patients, etc. Irony is everywhere in this book.

The film people, the Drogues were a brilliant, seedy lot: the driven son and the father who made him looking on with "gypsy eyes, passive and watchful."

I would agree that the ending was a bit tacked on. Lee must go down, but Gordon escapes too easily -- though it happens in life. I've known some incredible human wrecks who've turned on a dime and ended up leading AA meetings, etc. Still in a novel we need more.

All in all, you are spending time with Stone the fine writer in this tale of Hollywood and the savagery of the image world: light that reveals, images that devour.

This was a great book for me.

(Damascus Gate was so different, more erudite in its approach to a very different story.)

Good R. Stone, but not great
Robert Stone has written so many GREAT novels (Hall of Mirrors, Dog Soldiers, Flag for Sunrise) that his true followers -- I consider myself one -- expect brilliance every time. Children of light is good, but not great. Perhaps its the Hollywood subject matter; it's much less compelling than Vietnam or Central America. Although beautifully written, as is everything by Stone, the characters are so wan and unaware of themselves that the book is unrelentingly depressing. Still, despite the drawbacks, its still Robert Stone. This will be one of the best books you read this year.