In this promising first novel, Linda Yablonsky paints a humorous, off-beat picture of New York's elite drug culture in the 1980s. The narrator/protagonist is adrift in a world in which who you hang out with matters more than how much money you make. A would-be writer, she's an aimless thirty year old druggie who works as cook in a chic downtown restaurant. Her natural hipness makes her a favorite of the "in" crowd and gradually she's drawn to the glamour of an aristocracy which, as a middle class Jewish girl from the burbs, doesn't reflect what is familiar to her. Adopting the vices of the elite, she finds a role she can cop--drug dealer to artists, models and entrepreneurs. Spurred on by her reckless girlfriend, a marvelous rockster named "Kit" whose helpless charm and deviant life style are brought vividly to life by Yablonsky, she is soon buying and selling heroin for them. An endless stream of people herd in and out of their apartment, and she observes everything that goes down with the deadpan humor of a cynic and the naive detachment of someone who has nothing to lose. Her anxiety increases as she places herself further and further at risk, betraying the tough veneer she presents to the world. Surprisingly, when she gets busted her life calms down--the crisis enables her to acknowlege a number of issues she's been avoiding since her arrival in New York: her total lack of identity and her desire to become a writer. At this juncture, Yablonsky attempts to take on bigger issues to do with drug addiction and destructive behavior and,in my opinion, she takes a wrong turn. She struggles to link the character's pathology with the history of the Holocaust and her heritage as a descendant of survivors, for example. It doesn't come across and a strict editor would have told Yablonsky not to go there.
At the end of the story, she is stunned and confused, but has managed to change the imprisoning architecture of her life--no small feat for a human being, and a huge task for a novel to make both authentic and interesting. It's enough in a first novel (and an autobiographical work) to describe the transformation the character goes through and acknowledge the issues raised as a result of the character's experience. Neither Yablonsky nor her narrator need to know all the answers, but one of them should ask the right questions--and then leave it at that. Since the book is based on personal experience, it's possible Yablonsky rushed it to completion--who can afford to wait a decade or two to digest life's experience?
The author's eye for detail and ironic sense of pathos make for a tale which is both exotic and urbane. Despite her immersion in a chaotic, intense world, there's a soundness to the narrator's voice which inspires trust in the reader. As an outsider, she's adopted a New Yorker's consistently sarcastic, humorous attitude but, in contrast, has an underlying helplessness and sincerity which suggests she is more of a human being than she likes to admit. I liked her character a lot and look forward to more novels by Yablonsky in the future--a second is long overdue!

This book chronicles the "life cycle" of the junkie, in which one goes from the "heroin honeymoon" period, to the ultimate devastation. It rates right up there among my favorite junkie novels, after Permanent Midnight, and Trainspotting. I'm an ex-heroin addict, and while I never was a dealer, made deals with the DEA, or suggled drugs in from the Golden Triangle, as the protagonist in this book does, Yablonsky's narrative rings very true.

What a wonderful novel this is. It's the spellbinding and perfectly truthful story of a particular place and a particular time, when perspective was short and drugs weren't evil. Yablonsky's got a ruthless memory and a cutting deadpan style.