Everyone's Burning: A Novel

by Ian Spiegelman

A young man without prospects finds his place in the universe--as a young woman's slave.

Poised somewhere between high school and adulthood, Leon Koch roams the bars and bedrooms of Bayside, Queens, twenty minutes and a thousand psychic miles from Manhattan--a multicultural landscape where the line dividing the middle class from the street gangs has been obliterated. With his two best friends just out of prison for pipe-bombing a house, Koch discovers that cocaine and alcohol have imbued him with "superpowers," twisting his mind into a plexus where love, fear, violence, and intimacy are indistinguishable. As life becomes a waking nightmare spent fighting with police, predators, and the law-abiding, unscarred citizens he dismisses as "normals," Koch drives relentlessly toward a fantasy zone. What he finds is a fetishistic realm of worship and ritual where people are never quite certain whether they're role-playing or getting played by their roles. Testing the bounds of sensation under the constant threat of violence, Koch explores a world that is a slave to its own secrets, where freedom exists only in a 911 call from the brink of self-annihilation.

Told in a hallucinatory, street-poetic voice, Everyone's Burning depicts the lives and deaths of a generation that raised itself on Star Wars , talk shows, and Charles Manson interviews. Koch is a bleary yet gimlet-eyed tour guide through one of their neighborhoods.

Genres: Fiction

164 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Andrew Vachss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Illuminates a subculture so dedicated to anesthetics that it seeks pain to see if they really work. Ugly truth, beautifully written.

[Elle Blackwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible book. The themes are heavy, but somehow Ian lightens them with his witty, humorous observations. What I love most about the writing is that it's genuine in a way you don't often see in a novel, and it's unpredictable. Ian has created his own formula. His writing is bold, raw, unapologetic, and absolutely believable. And although the narrator's world is foreign to me, the emotions are universal.

[Kaitlyn (ktxx22) Walker · Rating 1 out of 5]

No. just no to this. Bought it at the dollar store and paid too much for it. Drugs, sbdm, rape, murder, suicide, and slather on a shit pot full of bad writing. Terrible book.

[Mel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a book I picked up on a whim at a used bookstore because the synopsis seemed intriguing.
I am sure there are readers who enjoyed this book, but the more I read; the writing style and subject manner just wasn't for me. I had a hard time finishing it, but I am not a quitter and completed it.

[CB Brim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really a significant book but I really enjoyed Spiegelman's writing style.

[Cheyenne Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book was very different from what Im used to reading. With that being said it was an okay book.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great. Dark. I love the way this guy writes.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book about a rather apathetic character. Dark, drugs, right up my alley.

[Martin]

wretched