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Peyton Amberg is 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, she slowly but surely loses her youthfulness, her good looks, even her sanity, as her paramours become rougher and the sex more brutal.A savvy riff on the classic figure of Madame Bovary, Peyton Amberg is a caustic and brilliant satire of contemporary marriage, as it charts the free-floating lust and exploits of a woman yearning for fulfillment outside of rigid societal structure.Tama Janowitz's Peyton Amberg is nasty, funny, jaundiced, sarcastic, searingly honest, and mesmerizing from beginning to end.
477 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 2003
4 people are currently reading
241 people want to read
About the author
Tama Janowitz
29 books265 followersTama Janowitz is an American novelist and a short story writer. The 2005 September/October issue of Pages magazine listed her as one of the four "brat pack" authors, along with Bret Easton Ellis, Mark Lindquist and Jay McInerney.
Born in San Francisco, California to a psychiatrist father and literature professor mother who divorced when she was ten, Janowitz moved to the East Coast of the United States to attend Barnard College and the Columbia University School of the Arts and started writing about life in New York City, where she had settled down.
She socialized with Andy Warhol and became well-known in New York's literary and social circles. Her 1986 collection of short stories, Slaves of New York brought her wider fame. Slaves of New York was adapted into a 1989 film directed by James Ivory and starring Bernadette Peters. Janowitz wrote the screenplay and also appeared, playing Peters' friend.
Janowitz has published seven novels, one collection of stories and one work of non-fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Tim Hunt, and their adopted daughter.
Born in San Francisco, California to a psychiatrist father and literature professor mother who divorced when she was ten, Janowitz moved to the East Coast of the United States to attend Barnard College and the Columbia University School of the Arts and started writing about life in New York City, where she had settled down.
She socialized with Andy Warhol and became well-known in New York's literary and social circles. Her 1986 collection of short stories, Slaves of New York brought her wider fame. Slaves of New York was adapted into a 1989 film directed by James Ivory and starring Bernadette Peters. Janowitz wrote the screenplay and also appeared, playing Peters' friend.
Janowitz has published seven novels, one collection of stories and one work of non-fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Tim Hunt, and their adopted daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
January 6, 2009
a book about a slut. well, you could buy this, or you could read the blog i created when i was 23. you choose.
did-not-finish
May 19, 2016Unfinished; review to be continued.
---
There are certain books I have on a reading list that only exists in my head; I've never attempted to catalogue them on Goodreads; I've never even tried to make a note of them all in the same place. They're books I remember wanting to read when I was much younger, that I made notes of in various notebooks, often noting them down because I thought they sounded grown-up and edgy, the sort of books a cooler person - 'an adult' - would read. I think the reason I remembered this in particular was the title - there's something very evocative about the name Peyton Amberg. It's so deliciously American, for one thing. I don't know what made me buy it now, though - I really can't remember. Add to that the fact that when I started reading it, I was drunk - I came home from a night out and found it in my mailbox and just ripped the package open and started reading - and the whole thing has been a very weird reading experience.
When I started it, I realised that my assumption about where I first heard of it - I thought I'd read about it in a teen magazine, probably J-17 - had to be a false memory; it was published in 2003, a long time after I stopped reading those magazines. So it's a mystery. Maybe I heard about it from an LJ friend or read a review in a newspaper or Plan B (did they do book reviews?) Because of the teen magazine thing, I'd also thought it was a story about a young woman, if not a teenager; maybe the cover photo also had something to do with this; in fact, maybe the cover photo is actually responsible for the teen magazine association. In fact, Peyton is 50 years old in the present day of her story, though much of it is made up of flashbacks to her younger years and in particular the early years of her clinically cold marriage to Barry, a wealthy dentist with a nightmarish family.
---
Peyton Amberg is incredibly bleak about sex. It's bleak about EVERYTHING, but the sex is something else. I mean, for example:
Who could or would enjoy giving a blow job? She saw no pleasure in the activity: some guy lying there while she tried to cram a rubbery tube down her throat; sucking away, while once in a while he would twist at her nipple, miming the winding of an alarm clock. There was nothing erotic about it: a mouthful of stray pubic hairs or the sour taste of warm ejaculate. A pathetic and hateful enterprise that one was expected - required - to do, like mid-term exams in college, or balancing a checkbook, a way to make torture take place year round, so one always had something unpleasant looming on the horizon.
Well, when you put it like that...
One of the main cruxes of the book is that as a young woman, Peyton hates sex and sees it as a duty she must perform, a sort of mechanical function. It's only when she's older that she begins to crave it, but this comes with its own set of problems: the belief that in a woman of fifty, this craving is something ugly and repulsive; the feeling that when she looks in the mirror she sees a 'crazed slut'. She constantly sees herself from the outside and, for example, worries about what she must look like next to a young, beautiful man, even when it's clear that young, beautiful man desires her. There's no room for Peyton to see her own desire as something liberating. It doesn't matter whether she's disgusted by sex or longing for it, she's crippled by her own needs/lack of. Her experience of desire is defined by shame.
---
Besides, women knew it was never as strong an emotion to get what you wanted as it was not to get it. Oof.
---
There are certain books I have on a reading list that only exists in my head; I've never attempted to catalogue them on Goodreads; I've never even tried to make a note of them all in the same place. They're books I remember wanting to read when I was much younger, that I made notes of in various notebooks, often noting them down because I thought they sounded grown-up and edgy, the sort of books a cooler person - 'an adult' - would read. I think the reason I remembered this in particular was the title - there's something very evocative about the name Peyton Amberg. It's so deliciously American, for one thing. I don't know what made me buy it now, though - I really can't remember. Add to that the fact that when I started reading it, I was drunk - I came home from a night out and found it in my mailbox and just ripped the package open and started reading - and the whole thing has been a very weird reading experience.
When I started it, I realised that my assumption about where I first heard of it - I thought I'd read about it in a teen magazine, probably J-17 - had to be a false memory; it was published in 2003, a long time after I stopped reading those magazines. So it's a mystery. Maybe I heard about it from an LJ friend or read a review in a newspaper or Plan B (did they do book reviews?) Because of the teen magazine thing, I'd also thought it was a story about a young woman, if not a teenager; maybe the cover photo also had something to do with this; in fact, maybe the cover photo is actually responsible for the teen magazine association. In fact, Peyton is 50 years old in the present day of her story, though much of it is made up of flashbacks to her younger years and in particular the early years of her clinically cold marriage to Barry, a wealthy dentist with a nightmarish family.
---
Peyton Amberg is incredibly bleak about sex. It's bleak about EVERYTHING, but the sex is something else. I mean, for example:
Who could or would enjoy giving a blow job? She saw no pleasure in the activity: some guy lying there while she tried to cram a rubbery tube down her throat; sucking away, while once in a while he would twist at her nipple, miming the winding of an alarm clock. There was nothing erotic about it: a mouthful of stray pubic hairs or the sour taste of warm ejaculate. A pathetic and hateful enterprise that one was expected - required - to do, like mid-term exams in college, or balancing a checkbook, a way to make torture take place year round, so one always had something unpleasant looming on the horizon.
Well, when you put it like that...
One of the main cruxes of the book is that as a young woman, Peyton hates sex and sees it as a duty she must perform, a sort of mechanical function. It's only when she's older that she begins to crave it, but this comes with its own set of problems: the belief that in a woman of fifty, this craving is something ugly and repulsive; the feeling that when she looks in the mirror she sees a 'crazed slut'. She constantly sees herself from the outside and, for example, worries about what she must look like next to a young, beautiful man, even when it's clear that young, beautiful man desires her. There's no room for Peyton to see her own desire as something liberating. It doesn't matter whether she's disgusted by sex or longing for it, she's crippled by her own needs/lack of. Her experience of desire is defined by shame.
---
Besides, women knew it was never as strong an emotion to get what you wanted as it was not to get it. Oof.
July 27, 2011
I get the feeling Tama Janowitz is wasted on this story and this character. She is obviously a skilled author as it was her writing style alone that pushed me to read to the end. Peyton Amberg is not a likable character and I ended up not caring about her downfall.
June 14, 2012
This book was unusual. Although I hated how selfish and self-absorbed the character was I finished the book and found that I´d enjoyed it. I didn´t find it predictable, which I liked. This book isn´t for happy ending lovers but I would reccommend it.
December 27, 2020
I've read this book several times now at different stages in my life (20s and 30s) and can say that each time I felt differently about the character and her story, realising new and different elements each time. I do enjoy this book, and would recommend it to others.
August 18, 2007
A rather serious and reasonalby well done exploration of social anomie.
Read
April 15, 2020Dnf
April 22, 2011
One of Janowitz's best and deeper works. Funny, sometimes raw, and very critical: we never know if the style is purely feminist or purely feminist mockery.
August 10, 2016
Another one I read many years ago. It's stuck with me, like something yucky. My memories of this book are unsettling and queasy, but vivid all the same.
December 2, 2021
This book was like a train wreck; not good, but I couldn't make myself look away. The chronology of the story was odd, bouncing back and forth between the present and multiple points in the past. I didn't really like any of the characters and there was no one to root for. The man that Peyton finally said she loved was horrible, and the ending was abrupt and unsatisfactory. There was a lot of sex, but it was all so unsexy. Additionally, the use of metaphors was ridiculous. They lost any evocative effect because there were so many of them. At one point it felt like the author was using metaphors at the end of every single paragraph. The one good thing I can say is that the author is obviously a talented writer and, against my will, kept me hooked til the end.
June 1, 2017
I felt this read as a darker version of 'fear of thing's...less psychoanalytic though and though dark not as dark as say a Hubert Selby junior tale.
It was a book I picked up really unaware of its content being just something I got from a book deal at a charity shop but it's a book of a journey of sorts undertook through extra marital affairs.
That's a simplistic take in honesty and the book bounces back and forth from circumstance to circumstance which initially made for some confusion but in honesty once used to it this works as a great device and allows for a full circle kind of thing.
It was a book I picked up really unaware of its content being just something I got from a book deal at a charity shop but it's a book of a journey of sorts undertook through extra marital affairs.
That's a simplistic take in honesty and the book bounces back and forth from circumstance to circumstance which initially made for some confusion but in honesty once used to it this works as a great device and allows for a full circle kind of thing.
January 10, 2025
Manhattan housewife and formerly compliant young thing, Peyton Amberg, descends into a madly cringe existential meltdown when she hits middle age and realises she's had it with being the schmuck who fits in with everyone else's plans all the time.
What could've been a nauseatingly positive story of an enlightened Peyton emerging from the chaos as a transformed, fully realised human being, instead sees her unwilling / unable to disengage from her 'liberated' new normal, which is hilariously, unrelentingly mortifying.
No happy ending, and all the better for it. Go, Peyton.
What could've been a nauseatingly positive story of an enlightened Peyton emerging from the chaos as a transformed, fully realised human being, instead sees her unwilling / unable to disengage from her 'liberated' new normal, which is hilariously, unrelentingly mortifying.
No happy ending, and all the better for it. Go, Peyton.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 17, 2021
Read in 2003; my review from then: Badly written novel about a woman who is so poorly characterized that it's impossible to relate. The plot doesn't hold together, and the way it flashes between various periods of time simply doesn't work. A lot of sex but it's depressing rather than a turn-on. Not worth reading.
January 21, 2020
Bbbbllllllaaaaaahhhhh.
April 11, 2024
cautionary tale about being a hot girl in your 20s
August 21, 2024
Loved it. It was a page-turner, and if you have the guts, read it.
March 12, 2025
It's a slog of a novel about a woman who cannot catch a break while trying to get rich off of evil men
April 13, 2016
I like stories about messy women and Peyton Ambergris is definitely one of the messiest. She has a lot of similarities to the protagonist of A Certain Age, in the sense of her attempted social climbing and poor relationship decision making.
I like that as the reader, you get to see enough of Peyton's background to see what makes her the way she is, growing up exposed to mental illness and drug abuse, and then in am environment where any number of horrifying behaviors were done by everybody and considered to be no big deal.
The one thing I didn't like was that the narrative jumped around so much chronologically. It starts at the end, then goes to almost the beginning but not quite, then to the middle, in no particular order, then back to the beginning. Sometimes you get a later part of the story which an earlier part would have put on context, but you don't get the earlier part until later. This makes it a little hard to follow.
I like that as the reader, you get to see enough of Peyton's background to see what makes her the way she is, growing up exposed to mental illness and drug abuse, and then in am environment where any number of horrifying behaviors were done by everybody and considered to be no big deal.
The one thing I didn't like was that the narrative jumped around so much chronologically. It starts at the end, then goes to almost the beginning but not quite, then to the middle, in no particular order, then back to the beginning. Sometimes you get a later part of the story which an earlier part would have put on context, but you don't get the earlier part until later. This makes it a little hard to follow.
March 24, 2013
Move over 50 Shades and meet Peyton Amberg! I enjoyed this book a lot, it was very well written and hunoristic at times. Eventhough I won't approve how the main character is living her life, I somehow understand it, especially when you know that you are stuck to a guy like Barry for the rest of your life...
January 19, 2009
Hmmm...what to say about this book. Well...it was sexy. It bounced around a lot so you had to keep a timeline in your head of what she was doing and when. I really liked Peyton, and at times identified with her. All around, I liked the book - didn't LOVE it, but liked it.
December 27, 2010
It wasn't quite what I expected, or what the description made it appear. I finished it but I didn't particularly enjoy the story. But you would read it if you were locked in a room with nothing else to read.
June 15, 2007
even though the narrator is not the kindest person, i was completely drawn in. great read.
Read
May 1, 2008I got it on Bookmooch!
March 15, 2008
US Editor: Diane Higgins (St. Martin's Press)
March 31, 2010
Peyton Amberg: A Novel by Tama Janowitz (2004)
August 28, 2010
I was taken aback by how gritty this book is, compared to Janowitz's other novels, but after reading it I'm struck by how brilliantly she defined the narrator by telling the story in this way.
June 24, 2011
Honest and insightful and extremely well written- a rare find!
January 18, 2012
As much as I tried I couldn't warm to the character and as such didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews