The main character is a woman whose life is a constant search for love and kicks and a sense of purpose, none of which are likely to come easy. An anti-heroine in every sense of the world, Peyton’s world is shown through both present day and flashback, and it’s not a pretty sight. I stuck with this out of loyalty to Janowicz (her excellent Slaves Of New York and Cannibal In Manhattan were great) but whilst appreciating the nihilism, I felt this book really had nowhere to go. Which it did. (

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cliffagogo | Mar 17, 2007 |

An excellent novel about a married, sex-addicted woman searching for she-knows-not-what in lovers around the world.

peonygoat | Oct 21, 2006 |

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Epigraph

The Soul Has No Morality

We do not hear the hooves,
Although they grow louder, hourly
And the horses are magnificent,
Snooty and vain!
And the carriage is black and stately.

The soul has no mortality.
It is waiting, fidgety with hope.
It is too abstract to escape,
And not clever at all.
It is no Houdini.

The train takes its time.
At each stop there are mourners
Weeping and waving.
The soul does not weep,
It has no sense of what is proper.

The soul
is not even near the train!
On another galaxy it listens to horns.
It whirls on pins. It is clapping
Restless hands. It is singing
'Blue Moon' off key.

- Phyllis Janowitz

Dedication

To Betsy Lerner

First words

There were a few hotels near Central Station but the first one she went to was more than three hundred dollars a night and she was aware she could no longer afford it.

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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0312318448, Hardcover)

In her sizzling new novel, Tama Janowitz moves beyond the world of the single woman (Slaves of New York, A Certain Age), and now targets a young woman growing ever restless in her marriage, and ever hopeful that the next bed will produce someone more exciting. As she moves from man to man, Peyton Amberg slowly but surely loses her youthfulness, her good looks, even her sanity, as her paramours become rougher and the sex more dangerous.

A savvy riff on the classic figure of Madam Bovary, Peyton Amberg is a caustic and brilliant satire of contemporary marriage as it is undermined by free-floating lust and exploits of a woman yearning for fulfillment outside of rigid societal structure.

Peyton Amberg is nasty, funny, jaundiced, sarcastic, searingly honest, and mesmerizing from beginning to end.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:23 -0400)

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