Product Description

From Maggie Estep, heralded author of Diary of an Emotional Idiot, comes this darkly funny collection of inter-connected stories.

Jody Ray, a young psychiatrist, conceals her own nymphomania -- and a penchant for stiletto boots -- behind a conservative navy work suit. After Jody meets Rob and moves into his apartment, life for this nice, normal Jewish boy from Chicago will never be the same. Even without the speed she shoots to get through medical school, Jody's sexual and emotional demands would have pushed poor Rob to the suicide attempt that eventually turns him into one of her patients. Like Rob, the other men she meets cannot help but be caught and destroyed in the vortex she creates. Some flee to the relative safety of Jody's old acquaintance, Katie Murphy. Though a foul-mouthed former sex-phone operator, this lion tamer's daughter has come through life hopeful and intact.

Soft Maniacs traces the interwoven lives of these two women as they struggle to make their way in an erratic world they can't quite get a grasp on. Through sharp, vigorous prose, underlaid with a piercing wit, Maggie Estep leads us on a roller coaster tour of the underbelly of their psyches, surprising and delighting us at every turn. At once frightening and hilarious, heartbreaking and hopeful, Soft Maniacs is an unforgettable exploration of how people find one another in an accelerated world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1583855 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Not a book for the timid, this wonderfully intense collection of interconnected short stories from the author of Diary of an Emotional Idiot presents a cast of searchers, almost-but-not-quite-lost souls crisscrossing a lusciously sordid New York. The book centers around the tangled lives of two single women. In "Horses," the reader is introduced to free-spirited Katie, the daughter of a circus lion tamer, and to wealthy, almost pathologically oversexed Jody, who is slumming it as the lion tamer's lover. Though both women leave the circus and travel to New York, where Jody becomes a therapist and Katie works at various jobs (walking dogs, doing phone sex, etc.) and takes photographs, their parallel paths never cross (although they both date the same man at different times). The juxtaposition of Estep's fluid prose with her jarring, hard-edged contentAher stories are laced with sexAkeeps the reader's constant attention, as does her fascinating though sometimes disconcerting decision to track her female protagonists by allowing the men in their lives to narrate. In "The Patient," Jody's artist lover, Rob, impregnates a lesbian he calls Crone after he comes home and discovers her having sex with Jody. In "Teeth," Jody seduces her patient, Jack, during a session in which he describes his mistreatment at the hands of a sexually predatory intern. Later, in "Monkeys," Jack and Katie are living together, and Jack progresses from using Katie's cat as a prop in his tourist scams to working an honest job at a stable in Brooklyn, while in "One of Us," Jody, now married, takes steps to adopt the Crone's child. Though their paths may be crooked, Estep's richly drawn characters do ultimately manage to reach a hard-won state of grace in this disturbing, audacious and unconventionally satisfying book. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Estep (Diary of an Emotional Idiot presents a first collection revolving around reappearing characters. The stories are purported to be about women as seen through the eyes of men. Amidst a plethora of graphic sexual description, often dark and violent, comes an occasional insight into the human condition. In "Circus," the characters are still endlessly searching, but there is a gentleness and strength unseen elsewhere. "When I was seven, my mother forgot my name," says Joe, who is still searching for someone who will remember it. This is the one story in which sex is not the only expression of despair. These pieces, apparently meant to explore the dark side of the down and out, have a disturbing superficiality. Not recommended.APatricia Gulian, South Portland, ME
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Dared to write from a man's point of view, MTV performance artist and author Estep (Diary of an Emotional Idiot, 1997) produced the short story "The Patient," in which promiscuous psychiatrist-in-training Jody brings her 47-year-old lesbian lover Millicent home to her live-in boyfriend, Rob, who graphically describes the ensuing threesome that sickens him and impregnates Millicent. The ending is not a happy one for Rob, but the writing experience exhilarated Estep, who wrote eight more loosely related stories featuring Jody and/or Katie, daughter of the lion tamer who was a lover of Jody's. The interest in following these characters is lessened by their obsession with sex (an effect of the male point of view?) and their generally directionless gen-X lives. Fans of Estep's novels are eagerly awaiting this book; others may find the writing and the sex too adolescent and raw for their tastes. Michele Leber

Customer Reviews

Beautiful Reality
Love isn't always like a Hallmark card. No more than Family Life is always like a Rockwell painting. Birthdays aren't always happy, and families aren't always made from relatives.

If anything, Life is more like an Arbus photograph: strange and vulnerable and damaged and beautiful all at once.

Human beings are imperfect creatures. And, in spite of this, we somehow manage to connect with each other.

In SOFT MANIACS, Maggie Estep captures this reality brilliantly. Comprised of nine intertwined stories which show two women - Jody, a sexually insatiable and unstable psychiatrist, and Katie, an assistant in forensic psychology who spent her youth traveling with her lion-tamer father and the circus - as shown through the eyes of the men who have loved them, this collection is like GEEK LOVE from the inside. Instead of being physically different, the characters in SOFT MANIACS could easily be called Freaks of the Heart.

Just like real humans.

This book is beautiful and resonant and will utterly disappoint anyone searching for a tenderly-narrated Rockwell-esque vision of love at the end of the century. But those of us who live in Reality will see the reflection of the darkest and most profound secrets of our hearts, and how in spite of our imperfections, we still have hope.

Waxing Circus-like
Soft Maniacs was difficult to get into, however personally, it didn't take me too long to adjust; it was real without being real. It was honest on the most perverted of levels; arousing and saddening. I discovered Maggie via Alan Wilder's spoiled brainchild, Recoil, to which she collaborated on Unsound Methods, which didin't hook me entirely until I listened to Love is a Dog from Hell. Maggie is itchy and unique, and definitely for those who veer toward the freakier side of fiction. I don't recommend her to all people, only those willing to recognise that perverse weirdness in us all.

Maggie Does it Again!
Maggie fans will not be let down by her latest book, "Soft Maniacs." It is a collection of short stories with characters that cross over from story to story. Most of the stories are about 20-30 somethings in New York City; however, Maggie does branch out into carnival workers. As with her previous book, "Diary of an Emotional Idiot," Maggie's recent work is full of unusual people described with Maggie's irrististable wit. Fans of Maggie's earlier work will likely notice a hint of maturity which only serves to strengthen her latest work.