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Bad Sex
“I drink, I hurt myself and the people around me, and then I write.” Brett is in Central America, away from her husband, when she begins a love affair with his friend, Eduard. Tragedy and comedy are properly joined at the hip in this loosely autobiographical book about infidelity, drinking, and the postponing of repercussions under the sun. Though coming undone is something we all try to avoid, Martin reminds us that going off the rails is sometimes a part of the ride.
180 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 24, 2015
19 people are currently reading
1261 people want to read
About the author
Clancy Martin
34 books105 followersClancy Martin (PhD, University of Texas at Austin, 2003) is Professor of Philosophy at University of Missouri-Kansas City. He works on nineteenth century philosophy, existentialism, moral psychology, applied ethics, and Buddhism.
Clancy’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine (where he is a contributing editor), The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The London Review of Books, GQ, Esquire, Ethics, The Times Literary Supplement, Vice (where he is a contributing editor), The London Times, Australian Financial Times, The Dublin Times, Details, New York, Elle, The Harvard Advocate, The Columbia Journalism Review, Bookforum, and many other publications. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, including Portuguese, Korean, and Mandarin. In 2009 and 2015 Kansas City's The Pitch named Clancy their "Best Author of the Year."
Clancy’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine (where he is a contributing editor), The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The London Review of Books, GQ, Esquire, Ethics, The Times Literary Supplement, Vice (where he is a contributing editor), The London Times, Australian Financial Times, The Dublin Times, Details, New York, Elle, The Harvard Advocate, The Columbia Journalism Review, Bookforum, and many other publications. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, including Portuguese, Korean, and Mandarin. In 2009 and 2015 Kansas City's The Pitch named Clancy their "Best Author of the Year."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
October 10, 2015
I loved this novel. It's dark and sexy and unrepentant. The story of a relapsed alcoholic having an affair. No more and no less. Brett is a flinty character. The narrative voice is spectacular.
October 26, 2015
I generally like addiction stories, but this one was so dark that I think I will abstain for a while.
Bad Sex is the story of a woman named Brett who loses her sobriety after she begins an affair. Brett's husband, Paul, had previously helped her quit drinking, but while on a business trip to Mexico, she meets and begins an affair with a banker named Eduard. Eduard encourages Brett to drink, and their encounters include violent sex. Soon Brett is secretly drinking and is having blackouts. Paul eventually leaves her, and Brett's life continues to spiral downward.
Clancy Martin's writing is terse, and Brett's story is told in short chapters — this novel is really a collection of vignettes, scenes from an alcoholic's life.
Despite being dark, the writing was both powerful and graceful. Here are some strong passages:
I don't think I was the target demographic for this novel. I found it to be disturbing, and I would recommend it with caution.
Bad Sex is the story of a woman named Brett who loses her sobriety after she begins an affair. Brett's husband, Paul, had previously helped her quit drinking, but while on a business trip to Mexico, she meets and begins an affair with a banker named Eduard. Eduard encourages Brett to drink, and their encounters include violent sex. Soon Brett is secretly drinking and is having blackouts. Paul eventually leaves her, and Brett's life continues to spiral downward.
Clancy Martin's writing is terse, and Brett's story is told in short chapters — this novel is really a collection of vignettes, scenes from an alcoholic's life.
Despite being dark, the writing was both powerful and graceful. Here are some strong passages:
That first drunk when you haven't been drunk in a long time is not really fun. But you recover parts of your personality you'd forgotten, or that had fallen asleep, or were even no longer there.
It's very hard to know, in the early few months of a love affair, what is real and what is imaginary. You find signs and confirmations everywhere. Men passing you on the street stop you to tell you that you're beautiful. Random street signs or airplanes passing overhead prophesies your happiness. Yet the mind of your lover remains as closed to you as that of a face on a billboard, or a distracted cab driver fiddling with his radio. Every time I looked at him, when we were happy together, I wanted to put him entirely in my mouth.
During an affair you need your closest friends, because you are falling apart, but then they try to fix things, which is what you don't want them to do. I was asking her to help me stop seeing Eduard but I couldn't stop seeing Eduard.
All these decisions you make for the sake of your lover are little steps you take away from the person you truly love. That's not to say you don't love them both, you do. But one has your heart and the other has your attention. Then, after many little steps, you turn around and he's so far away that you think, well, he's too far away now. We've gone.
I don't think I was the target demographic for this novel. I found it to be disturbing, and I would recommend it with caution.
May 24, 2017
It is not often that one of the books I receive monthly from my Nervous Breakdown Book Club subscription rubs me the wrong way, but this one did. It was for sure the dud of my May reading.
Brett, a recovering alcoholic, also a writer, breaks out of her happy marriage and her sobriety to embark on a lusty affair with an unsavory man. She know what she is doing is ill-advised and that the man is a cad, but she succumbs to lust and returns to alcohol.
We get to watch her self-destruction. I for one could not look away. Mercifully the book is short. Had it gone on for much longer, I might have thrown it against the wall.
I am always fascinated by descent-into-madness stories, especially if the descending character is female. I don't like to think too hard on what that says about me. Brett, however, was not a convincing female character.
Their affair takes them from one high end resort to another in Latin America. In that regard, it was at about the level of reading several Vanity Fair issues cover to cover. It is supposed to be a novel about adultery but really it is about addiction: to sex, to fear, and to alcohol. The writing is disjointed, not literary in my opinion, and by the end I no longer cared a whit about what happened to Brett.
Brett, a recovering alcoholic, also a writer, breaks out of her happy marriage and her sobriety to embark on a lusty affair with an unsavory man. She know what she is doing is ill-advised and that the man is a cad, but she succumbs to lust and returns to alcohol.
We get to watch her self-destruction. I for one could not look away. Mercifully the book is short. Had it gone on for much longer, I might have thrown it against the wall.
I am always fascinated by descent-into-madness stories, especially if the descending character is female. I don't like to think too hard on what that says about me. Brett, however, was not a convincing female character.
Their affair takes them from one high end resort to another in Latin America. In that regard, it was at about the level of reading several Vanity Fair issues cover to cover. It is supposed to be a novel about adultery but really it is about addiction: to sex, to fear, and to alcohol. The writing is disjointed, not literary in my opinion, and by the end I no longer cared a whit about what happened to Brett.
June 7, 2015
An episodic account of an affair that aspires to great love and collapses in alcoholic ruin. I like this book a great deal but it's a bit like admiring the gleam in the eye of a vulture as it alights on road kill and picks through the stew. It's definitely not a book for squares, but if you've ever stared into the abyss and wondered if it has suites with ocean views, this book is for you.
January 17, 2016
It's tough to "like" a book in which an unreliable narrator, Brett in this case, is headed for disaster and never really does much to try and change her "privileged" circumstances. The prose are straight-forward, fast paced and terse. Chapters are short, often just a page or two (I'm a remedial reader at best, and found myself on page 50 and Chapter 15 within an hour of starting Bad Sex.) It seems this sort of book has become more and more popular, and I'm not sure why. Aren't we all aware by now that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" as Thoreau knew over a century ago. And, if so, then why does it appear to be so thrilling to follow an alcoholic through her demise, at the failure of her marriage, her kids, her work (what is her work?) and even by the end, her lover and herself. Not sure. The writing here is strong, yes. The story? Not convinced.
June 13, 2015
I liked this book. I felt like it was a little weaker in the beginning, e.g. I'd liked to have known the narrator's name earlier, particularly since it's not a typical female name and I was confused as to who Brett was for a bit. It's a bit loose in the first-third, slightly scattered. It's also frustrating to see someone make so many bad decisions, but this is realistic and well-rendered and painful in a good way, as it would be to see your best friend (or yourself) making the same mistakes again and again.
There are many insightful passages about alcoholism and trust and truth and love. So many pages I dog-eared.
A fast, good read.
There are many insightful passages about alcoholism and trust and truth and love. So many pages I dog-eared.
A fast, good read.
January 17, 2026
Waaaarom schrijven mannen vanuit de pov van een vrouw bij dit soort verhalen???!!! Las wel snel en ik was wel geïntrigeerd, maar geen diepgang, cliché en niet literair. Pls mannen stop met doen alsof jullie affaires vanuit een vrouwelijk standpunt en systematisch seksueel misbruik zo goed begrijpen dat jullie er een boek over kunnen schrijven
July 10, 2017
Looking at this book's cover, I was like, "This will probably be fine." And then it wasn't fine. It was fucking GREAT.
Bad Sex is the story of a middle-aged woman writer and recovering alcoholic cheating on her husband with his banker, basically a Raymond Carver story with the gender roles flipped. I thought the author was a woman until halfway through the book when I looked at the author photo and was like "WHAT THE HELL A WHITE MALE AUTHOR WRITING AN EXTREMELY COMPLEX AND COMPELLING FEMALE LEAD?" This was a great surprise.
Here are some other general thoughts:
#1. Okay I am going to be a nerd for a moment and say that structurally as a novel this was so well done. I love books with a Part 1 that builds builds builds before ending in a Dramatic Climax Where The Character Must Decide followed by a Part 2 where said character either deals with their actions, or in this case, doesn't. One of the most famous books structured like this is Albert Camus' The Stranger, which was my favourite book when I was 17 and very angry. There are a weird number of similarities between how the two books feel when you read them (very few characters, the narration focusing on the weather/eating/drinking in a weirdly stoic way, the main character making A LOT of confusing decisions) even though they are not even close to being about the same things.
#2. I love the gender flipping of having an out of control female writer being a total mess at the centre of this story. But I also hate that fact because I know I would probably despise this book if it was about a man doing the same shit. It feels hypocritical for this to be my opinion but I don't really care lol.
#3. There are some truly brilliant lines in this book, two of which are distinctly about cocaine. Here they are:
"She stood up on a coffee table, wobbling. "I'm married! I'm married! Hey everybody, I am married!" She was waving her ring finger at the crowd. Someone shouted, "You are dancing on the coke!"
and also
"Cheating on your husband is a lot like doing cocaine. It's rarely pleasurable, but try quitting."
Just like WHAT???!!!
Bad Sex is the story of a middle-aged woman writer and recovering alcoholic cheating on her husband with his banker, basically a Raymond Carver story with the gender roles flipped. I thought the author was a woman until halfway through the book when I looked at the author photo and was like "WHAT THE HELL A WHITE MALE AUTHOR WRITING AN EXTREMELY COMPLEX AND COMPELLING FEMALE LEAD?" This was a great surprise.
Here are some other general thoughts:
#1. Okay I am going to be a nerd for a moment and say that structurally as a novel this was so well done. I love books with a Part 1 that builds builds builds before ending in a Dramatic Climax Where The Character Must Decide followed by a Part 2 where said character either deals with their actions, or in this case, doesn't. One of the most famous books structured like this is Albert Camus' The Stranger, which was my favourite book when I was 17 and very angry. There are a weird number of similarities between how the two books feel when you read them (very few characters, the narration focusing on the weather/eating/drinking in a weirdly stoic way, the main character making A LOT of confusing decisions) even though they are not even close to being about the same things.
#2. I love the gender flipping of having an out of control female writer being a total mess at the centre of this story. But I also hate that fact because I know I would probably despise this book if it was about a man doing the same shit. It feels hypocritical for this to be my opinion but I don't really care lol.
#3. There are some truly brilliant lines in this book, two of which are distinctly about cocaine. Here they are:
"She stood up on a coffee table, wobbling. "I'm married! I'm married! Hey everybody, I am married!" She was waving her ring finger at the crowd. Someone shouted, "You are dancing on the coke!"
and also
"Cheating on your husband is a lot like doing cocaine. It's rarely pleasurable, but try quitting."
Just like WHAT???!!!
June 1, 2016
I read this in less than 2hrs; it went down quick and smooth, like an expensive drink that you pay not to have to think too hard about.
We all possess destructive impulses, have experienced the rush of refusing--finally & with great relief--to keep it all "together". And how easy it is to come undone. Just pull a single thread.
In this novel, we meet and worm into the mind of Brett, a woman who possesses all the markers of modern success: wealth, achievement, family and friends (read: fans). But she wants to play. Wants to break outside of her life, receding into the bottle and perhaps arms of someone new, and quickly she finds her exit. However, she never really untethers from her old, more respectable self; in fact, she is ultimately fulfilled by the tension between what she has, what she wants, and what she needs.
Her life is a game of lies, misgivings, and self-deceptions--how easy it is to relate! How appealing the escape.
This book is for anyone who has picked up a bottle and wondered what would happen if they didn't put it down and then picked up another. For anyone who has wondered what would happen if we began to tell more lies than truths (or perhaps, just admitted we already do so). It is an unflinching look into the abyss. How strangely warming it is to feel it looking back. To eschew our reservations and inhibitions is not more true living, but it is exhilarating, and it is this which is so easy to forget when in our day to day grind. This book is not cathartic but it is a tonic.
Bad Sex does a masterful job of teasing out the complexities of life through its razor sharp invocation and reflection on the details that catch our attention and that we share with one another, which become the markers of connection and dislocation.
We all possess destructive impulses, have experienced the rush of refusing--finally & with great relief--to keep it all "together". And how easy it is to come undone. Just pull a single thread.
In this novel, we meet and worm into the mind of Brett, a woman who possesses all the markers of modern success: wealth, achievement, family and friends (read: fans). But she wants to play. Wants to break outside of her life, receding into the bottle and perhaps arms of someone new, and quickly she finds her exit. However, she never really untethers from her old, more respectable self; in fact, she is ultimately fulfilled by the tension between what she has, what she wants, and what she needs.
Her life is a game of lies, misgivings, and self-deceptions--how easy it is to relate! How appealing the escape.
This book is for anyone who has picked up a bottle and wondered what would happen if they didn't put it down and then picked up another. For anyone who has wondered what would happen if we began to tell more lies than truths (or perhaps, just admitted we already do so). It is an unflinching look into the abyss. How strangely warming it is to feel it looking back. To eschew our reservations and inhibitions is not more true living, but it is exhilarating, and it is this which is so easy to forget when in our day to day grind. This book is not cathartic but it is a tonic.
Bad Sex does a masterful job of teasing out the complexities of life through its razor sharp invocation and reflection on the details that catch our attention and that we share with one another, which become the markers of connection and dislocation.
February 22, 2016
When Roxane Gay tells you to read a book on Goodreads, I take it to heart. She called Bad Sex “dark and sexy and unrepentant.” It certainly is all of those things.
Short, but packing an incredible punch, Bad Sex is what happens when a writer taps into the darkest desires of humanity and puts them to page. When Brett, a recovering alcoholic expatriate living in Central America, meets her husband’s banker, she abandons everything—even her sobriety—for the hope of feeling, and staying, in the place where everything is heady and beautiful.
Brett is an incredible character, astonishing in her raw, tumultuous search for affection, and it spills out of her and into the reader at an almost unstoppable rate. She connects with everything that we recognize as being powerfully woman, and succumbs to everything that we see as being uniquely human.
Short, but packing an incredible punch, Bad Sex is what happens when a writer taps into the darkest desires of humanity and puts them to page. When Brett, a recovering alcoholic expatriate living in Central America, meets her husband’s banker, she abandons everything—even her sobriety—for the hope of feeling, and staying, in the place where everything is heady and beautiful.
Brett is an incredible character, astonishing in her raw, tumultuous search for affection, and it spills out of her and into the reader at an almost unstoppable rate. She connects with everything that we recognize as being powerfully woman, and succumbs to everything that we see as being uniquely human.
January 5, 2016
This was a fun, fast read. It was both funny and sad and kinda scraped things to the bare-bones truth. I ate it up. These are the kinda books I like to read. So fast, so good, so moody and I love the descriptions of food/drinks/weather/hotels/the beach. And the sexy sex scenes are sexy and the silly sex scenes are silly and they're funny when they need to be, but there aren't too many, either. And the horrible decisions are horrible and the book doesn't try to do too much. It's just a really good little novel and that's completely and totally satisfying.
October 5, 2015
A fast-paced book about a woman having an affair and resuming her alcoholism. Even though it doesn't sound like it the book is very witty and actually not super depressing. Definitely takes all the glamour out of having an affair, really examines people drawn to being self-destructive, but in a kind of dry humor sort of way.
November 30, 2016
This was pretty awful. While Clancy can at times pull out a pretty decent sentence they are totally wasted in this book. "Bad Sex" falls into the genre of rich people behaving badly. The narrator begins an affair with her husband's banker. What follows is a catalog of South American vacation destinations, luxury clothing brand names and catalogs of fancy meals and drinks.
October 31, 2024
couldn't look away, must read
November 19, 2015
Hmm, I read this one in a few hours. First impression after finishing: it's a familiar but a very dark story.
Bad Sex is about a wealthy woman named Brett who breaks her sobriety and begins to drink again after she begins an affair with her husband's banker. Eduard (the guy she's having an affair with) doesn't necessarily encourage Brett to drink, but he doesn't discourage it either. Their sexual encounters are very detailed and often include really violent sex (some scenes were quite appalling--I'm surprised no one called the cops). Her husband discovers the affair and kicks her out of their home, and Brett continues with Eduard in a downward spiral of black outs, drinking, and ridiculous behavior.
The writing here is very minimal and told in short chapters. It reads more like a collection of vignettes than a novel, almost as if you are looking at a photo album of an alcoholic's life. Brett is a highly unlikeable character--she's rude, obnoxious, and extremely narcissistic. At times I found myself literally rolling my eyes and thinking: "Really, bitch?" The choice to make this book short was a wise one, as I don't think I could have put up with reading about any more of Brett's antics after 182 pages.
Despite everything, I don't think this was the book for me. The writing is good but I was literally counting down the pages until it was over, it was so disturbingly uncomfortable I just wanted it to be finished.
Bad Sex is about a wealthy woman named Brett who breaks her sobriety and begins to drink again after she begins an affair with her husband's banker. Eduard (the guy she's having an affair with) doesn't necessarily encourage Brett to drink, but he doesn't discourage it either. Their sexual encounters are very detailed and often include really violent sex (some scenes were quite appalling--I'm surprised no one called the cops). Her husband discovers the affair and kicks her out of their home, and Brett continues with Eduard in a downward spiral of black outs, drinking, and ridiculous behavior.
The writing here is very minimal and told in short chapters. It reads more like a collection of vignettes than a novel, almost as if you are looking at a photo album of an alcoholic's life. Brett is a highly unlikeable character--she's rude, obnoxious, and extremely narcissistic. At times I found myself literally rolling my eyes and thinking: "Really, bitch?" The choice to make this book short was a wise one, as I don't think I could have put up with reading about any more of Brett's antics after 182 pages.
Despite everything, I don't think this was the book for me. The writing is good but I was literally counting down the pages until it was over, it was so disturbingly uncomfortable I just wanted it to be finished.
February 23, 2016
Bad Sex has such a perfectly understated narrative voice. It's a restrained book about a relapsed alcoholic having an affair that leaves you with lots to consider. The editorial errors really bugged me though and brought me out of the narrative - proofread people!
November 27, 2016
I thought this was a joke, but it wasn't. Cliche, soulless and pointless. Very disappointing publication from NYT. It reads like a sheltered girl's blog about what a "crazy, rock-bottom glam" life would be like.
May 19, 2022
An almost diary of an alcoholic woman who is unhappy, undecided, confused and in affair.
"That first drunk when you haven’t been drunk in a long time is not really fun. But you recover parts of your personality you’d forgotten, or that had fallen asleep, or were even no longer there"
"That first drunk when you haven’t been drunk in a long time is not really fun. But you recover parts of your personality you’d forgotten, or that had fallen asleep, or were even no longer there"
January 2, 2016
Swift and sharp and gorgeous. I read it compulsively in a few hours.
November 23, 2017
THIS IS A FAST READ. I ENJOYED THE STORYLINE. IT FLOWED RIGHT ALONG
June 23, 2016
There's something tremendously tender, almost intimate, about the self-destruction on hand in Clancy Martin's Bad Sex, and for readers with no stomach for ugly complexities, I think it's fair to say this book won't be for you.
But for readers who have, in their own lives, known something about that almost unnamable thing that occasionally compels us towards the fire, you'll probably find a diamond-fine, compact, and terrifically human story in the "unholy mess of a girl" that Brett is. There's also something of that fascination of the abomination in the book, the thing that powers reality-TV viewership. On the outside at least, the lives being reported are well-off, filled with lavish travel and adventure, name brands and the trappings of wealth. The internal narrative is, of course, far more intricate...and fragile. And better even than the stripped-bone-bare prose that lands with the force of fists, is that this blistering-quick, smart, tortured, sympathetic and lonesome read will stay with you – as would an exotic vacation, or long-ago lost love.
And Tyrant Books adds yet another gem of a book to their stable. And like all the best presses out there, you may not know what's going to happen on the next page...but you can be damn sure it's worth finding out.
But for readers who have, in their own lives, known something about that almost unnamable thing that occasionally compels us towards the fire, you'll probably find a diamond-fine, compact, and terrifically human story in the "unholy mess of a girl" that Brett is. There's also something of that fascination of the abomination in the book, the thing that powers reality-TV viewership. On the outside at least, the lives being reported are well-off, filled with lavish travel and adventure, name brands and the trappings of wealth. The internal narrative is, of course, far more intricate...and fragile. And better even than the stripped-bone-bare prose that lands with the force of fists, is that this blistering-quick, smart, tortured, sympathetic and lonesome read will stay with you – as would an exotic vacation, or long-ago lost love.
And Tyrant Books adds yet another gem of a book to their stable. And like all the best presses out there, you may not know what's going to happen on the next page...but you can be damn sure it's worth finding out.
August 15, 2019
Yep, the writing is terse. Yes, the narrator is occasionally witty, and occasionally poignant, and often insightful. The choppy style somehow supported Brett weaving through the different points in the story. She's here, then she's here, then she's here, but little actual flow. Compelling technique, but...
...I simply didn't like her too much. I didn't like Eduard at all. It's frustrating to watch people deliberately sabotage their own lives, and that's what she was doing. Brett's husband, Paul, and his sons represented stability and love. Eduard....did not.
As an aside, the multiple typos/editing fails were distracting. This wasn't that long of a novel. Surely a copy editor could have fixed these. It's not difficult.
...I simply didn't like her too much. I didn't like Eduard at all. It's frustrating to watch people deliberately sabotage their own lives, and that's what she was doing. Brett's husband, Paul, and his sons represented stability and love. Eduard....did not.
As an aside, the multiple typos/editing fails were distracting. This wasn't that long of a novel. Surely a copy editor could have fixed these. It's not difficult.
December 11, 2015
Cyclical addiction is the keynote of this short spin of a writer attempting to create while
furiously destroying herself, her marriage, and eventually, her love affair. This is not a
pretty tale, nor does it give a moral for the reader to take home. The sexual connection is
graphic, but devoid of anything other than exploitation; this is not a love affair being
described. And because the tale demonstrates a cycle, the book ends pretty much where it
started, in a drunken blackout. Not an easy read.
This book was provided by Goodreads in hopes of a review. The opinions, however, are wholly mine.
furiously destroying herself, her marriage, and eventually, her love affair. This is not a
pretty tale, nor does it give a moral for the reader to take home. The sexual connection is
graphic, but devoid of anything other than exploitation; this is not a love affair being
described. And because the tale demonstrates a cycle, the book ends pretty much where it
started, in a drunken blackout. Not an easy read.
This book was provided by Goodreads in hopes of a review. The opinions, however, are wholly mine.
May 1, 2016
An intense and compact little novel, that, despite its brevity, manages to illustrate one woman's total razing of her life. The main character--wealthy, entitled, and a recovering alcoholic--has a yearlong affair, starts drinking again, loses her husband, and generally goes down in flames. It's not a novel for the fainthearted, but Bad Sex, despite its harrowing and oftentimes distasteful subject matter, is a fascinating portrayal of a deeply flawed, deeply human woman who embodies a binary existence: she is the hedonistic thrill of wanting more, at all times, as well as the tongue-tied fool who is unable to understand or define what she truly wants.
October 19, 2015
Sure, there's sex in this short novel--some of it is even bad (as in, harmful to the participants' emotional well-being)--but what you'll find more frequently is good writing. And heaps of it. Told in terse chapters, as if the story is being extracted from the narrator's mouth by a dentist using minimal amounts of novocaine, "Bad Sex" chronicles the downward spiral of an alcoholic writer struggling to maintain her slippery grip on respectability. Highly recommended.
December 10, 2015
This is not something I would normally choose to read, but one of my favorite authors (Roxane Gay) loved it so I was curious. The protagonist needs to get herself in rehab and therapy. But she doesn't. And pretty much the whole book is just a series of TERRIBLE decisions. If you like watching car wrecks and feeling gross then this is the book for you.
September 16, 2017
This is a semi-autobiography and as such, conveys a stark and raw quality to the ugly story of the main character descending into self obliteration. It is at most times, incredibly hard to read, but quite impossible to put down.
Why only three stars? I just can't relate in anyway to the nihilistic and excessive nature of the main character. Maybe, that's because I'm sane and she's not.
Why only three stars? I just can't relate in anyway to the nihilistic and excessive nature of the main character. Maybe, that's because I'm sane and she's not.
September 30, 2015
This is a damn fast and pleasurable read. Clancy Martin’s characters’ brand of hedonism, self-sabotage, and betrayal fit my tastes just right. The man knows how to write about someone spiraling down the rabbit hole.
September 20, 2015
Clancy Martin's novel really plumbs the depths of alcoholism and self-destruction. His protagonist's first-person account of the descent is harrowing and unsparing. You'll have a hard time putting this down, especially after the novel hits full stride near the end of its first half.
June 10, 2016
A quick, grim read about a relapsed alcoholic having an affair under her husband's nose. Even though I had a hunch where it was all leading, I was riveted. I loved the settings of Mexico City and various places around South America.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews