This collection of stories is both humorous and sad. Searle is a fine wordsperson and she takes you into the original world of imagination within her characters. Her themes are loss, longing for recognition, real or imagined, worlds of celebrities and dysfunctional family issues. An interesting minor theme is Searle realistically portraying individuals with developmental handicaps in a real way. Their characters are neither grotesque nor "happy angels". This collection tells wonderful and original stories, a real treat.

This whole collection feels strong and sure. Elizabeth Searle's style is such a pleasure!--the rhythm, the images, the sensual intelligent prose. These stories center around women and girls wanting and needing to be watched. The title piece works perfectly as a film noir novella. Tight, fast but complex; shapely; and it has a satisfyingly dark ending. I also like the story The Young and the Rest of Us. It has a lot of style and power, and a lot of feeling. Compassion for all characters. I read in order to learn how to live life, how to see the world and other people more clearly and deeply. Elizabeth Searle's writing gives me that!

rating for CELEBRITIES IN DISGRACE: 5 stars *****
The Mind of a Wannabe

Fiction takes us strange places, and none are stranger than a
fame-addicted mind. Searle's book is full of vivid people lacking all identity except as others see them - like a stalker looking for the next Pamela Smart, an adolescent acting out horror movies, a photography student imprinted on a charismatic professor. These are real people who will do anything - anything - to fill that gap where their self should be. Searle does us a great service in letting us see the cult of celebrity with new eyes, washed clean from the banal bios - "meteoric rise leads to substance problem but they're getting their life together" - we absorb every time we surf, watch, or read media.

Through the fresh poetry of her words, Searle draws the reader into the literal lives of her powerful imagination in this award winning collection of short stories. These stories engage your senses - hearing, sight, taste, smell - through objects, images, and sensations that cause immediate, sometimes visceral, reactions in the reader. Frequently, an image in one story will further develop a theme that Searle explored in one of the other stories, enhancing the experience of reading the collection. Searle captures raw female sexuality, genuine passion, complex family dynamics, and the often rocky emotional terrain of our lives. She tends to write about women who are underdogs and outcasts (or feel that way), flawed and painfully honest - more honest than most of us could be outside our own heads. Whether the story spans a lifetime at the dinner table or the time it takes to travel to the airport, Searle's narrative slips along to a satisfying conclusion. Along the way, the reader is treated to intensely personal, sometimes painful, details of an everyday life. You can almost taste the ice cream. Searle never puts distance between the reader and the character, she holds nothing back. Perhaps this you-are-there style may deter some readers but those of us who love language will find these varied stories most rewarding. Searle's stories feel true!

It took me a long time to get into this book. I found the writing to be stilted and unnatural rather than poetic and flowing. Other than Kin, I didn't feel much for any of the characters and found it hard to understand their motivations. The descriptions were very good but got to be too lengthy and ultimately obscured the action and made me want to skip paragraphs. The ending was a letdown and the characters seemed to just arrive there bewildered rather than having reached any sort of closure.

except maybe Jeanette Winterson's "Written on the Body." I felt deeply pulled in by this novel, which unfolds slowly and bathes you in an incredibly intoxicating, emotional mist. It is highly erotic and engrossing, and one of the only well written and overtly bisexual works of fiction. The only failure here is the ending which becomes a little too melodramatic and (I think) untrue to at least one of the characters. But the quality of language, plot, and character are very, very high. I took it in while I was recovering from a break-up and the relationships in Searle's book were enough to distract me. I consider it my rebound (without the consequences). Please read this book.

Elizabeth Searle writes a kind of poetic fiction that affects the reader deeply. This is also one of the best bisexual love stories I have ever read.