Mary Ann, Mona, Brian and gay Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver rent apartments from a pot-smoking woman of mystery, Anna Madrigal. Mary Ann works for ad agency boss Edgar; she has an affair with colleague Beauchamp who is married to De-De, Edgar's daughter. Coincidences abound as these sad, pathetic characters seek love amongst the one-night-stands in San Francisco.
Their tales are told in brief (two to three pages) episodes. The paragraphs and sentences are also short which gives the book a staccato style. Descriptions are littered with brand names: "Once, after smoking half a joint of Maui Wowie, he'd been reduced to using Crisco as a dip for Ritz crackers." It is only after making some effort on the internet that I learn that MW is a variety of THC infused marijuana from Hawaii and that Crisco is a brand of vegetable oil. The overall effect is to render some descriptions scarcely comprehensible I know what Levis are but not Weejuns. I can guess that Mark Spitz briefs are like swimming trunks and that a Ball Park frank is a type of sausage and that the Fol de Rol may be an entertainment but what on earth is a "hemostat roach clip"?
The far more pernicious effect of all this product placement is to make it appear that the characters in this story are two-dimensional and obsessed with appearance and brand names and possessions. I think I am supposed to feel sorry for them. The rich get no pleasure from their wealth. They struggle to get more column inches in the society papers than their rival hostesses. Everyone is searching for love and meaning. But I don't care. They are too shallow. Their tragedies are appearing in the wrong shade of nail varnish. One character only is interesting. He is dying of a terminal illness. There is a reason he wants a meaning to life. The rest of them are butterflies.
Rubbish. February 2013; 269 pages
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