Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #530908 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Scotland on Sunday
Peyton Amberg, sharply observed and tartly written, is as black as a New York fashion maven's wardrobe.

The Scotsman
Peyton Amberg might just be the definitive work of anti chick-lit.

Attitude
Peyton Amberg surely confirms Janowitz as the most caustic chronicler of contemporary America.

Customer Reviews

what has happened Tama?!
I was very shallow - when I first saw this book I was appalled by its cover. So although I considered Tama my favourite author, I didn't buy it. When I saw the US hardback cover I fell in love - how stylish, elegant, nostalgic! So I bought that...
I have to agree with the Berlin review and not the other one - I have loved loved loved Tama's books, but this is god awful depressing and doesn't have the lift, heart, wit of her past works. The decline starts with 'A Certain Age' for me - I ended that book thinking 'what the hell was that?' and this is so much worse. It is just nasty.
So the moral here - I should have gone with my first instincts and judged the UK version of the book by its heinous goth cover

sad, sad, sad
i've loved most of tama janowitz's books, even those trashed by the critics. "a certain age" and "the male crossdresser suppport group" are my favourites. "peyton" is a total disappointment. maybe janowitz felt like projecting the darkness and bitternes of the criticism she received for her former work into a novel. well, she succeeded. fay weldon considers this book funny and i really wonder about her sense of humour. the story is tragic, the heroine unsympathetic and what i miss most is what janowitz managed in all her other books: that though life may be more like hell than heaven, people find their way and triumph (in their own way)over it.
peyton just goes down down down and - opposed to a character like victor in easton ellis' "glamorama", who goes the same way, peyton's downward spiral left me cold.
it's sad that janowitz thinks that adding graphic (and extremely dull unerotic) sex-scenes and the mention of excrements on every second page will add a shock-element to the book's reception. that's repulsing withpout being intelligent. the single star is to express my hope that she will concentrate more on stories and less on boring shock-elements in the future.

Intense, Dark & Funny!
Amberg Peyton's heart is shaped liked a thorn! All the while its tearing up her inside... Tama Janowitz's latest offering is in many ways dark, sad and funny but ultimately a very bleak outlook on one person's very real pirsuit of happiness through love and relationships.

The book careers from one episode to the next, chopping and changing back and forth, almost as if each little sub-story is jostling for position. The book style is hard to follow, but in many ways this only added to the general sentiment left by the book. No detail is left unturned and you very much get the sense that we are delving into the persona of Peyton Amberg and looking outside on the world from within her.

Compared to any of the other books I have read by Janowitz, this leaves them all in the dust! This is an extremely intense book, one that left me with a lump in throat, mostly because it was soaked with such realism and emotion. Needless to say It was also easy to draw parallels between people in my own life and that of the characters in the book.

This is a very strong book and is very well written. I have read it several times and would recommend it to anyone. Each time it only gets better!