Product Description

'What was the use of living in a porn film now, at her age?' pondered Peyton Amberg, alone in a glamorous Hong Kong hotel room. At twenty, when she could have pulled a film star, she'd had no sex drive at all. Then she - and her mother - had wanted love and commitment so she married the 'nebbishy Jewish dentist' who thought she was a goddess but left her cold. Now she is on a world tour of past loves and lusty last stands which are getting to feel painfully insalubrious. As the young man she pursues in Antwerp says: 'You must be as old as my mother Lady, you must be fifty.' Tama Janowitz manages to be both intoxicatingly funny and sobering at once in this unforgettable portrait of a woman at a crossroads. From Hong Kong to Rio, via Milan and an English country house, Peyton Amberg has pursued her flings. And now what she wants to know is, when had women taken over the man's role and why was the whole set-up so goddamn humiliating?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #808959 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'The shrewd observation, the skewed invention... are the gifts of a singular talent' Jay McInerney

Still best known for Slaves of New York (1986), Janowitz, in her ninth fiction, details the sexual odyssey of a self-described slut. Peyton was raised in Boston on the wrong side of the tracks, where sexual innocence was a sign of weakness. Her well-bred mother, Nell, was disowned after marrying a car mechanic, who later deserted them. Manic-depressive Nell is responsible for Peyton's low self-esteem, always telling her she has no brains; so, despite her stunning attractiveness, she has no idea how to market herself. It's sheer good luck that she meets Barry Amberg, a nice Jewish boy from Long Island just starting out as a dentist, with a thing for "dark-haired shiksas with big boobs." His mother, Grace, pegs Peyton as a tramp but still foots the bill for a huge fancy wedding. The Jamaican honeymoon is not a success, though Barry is crazy about his "sexy princess" and Peyton is glad to have married up, though she's bothered that Barry "didn't seem to exist." He exists for the reader, but only as the stereotype of a hypochondriac Jew, while Peyton is little more than a collection of body parts. This nonlinear narrative randomly splices scenes from Peyton's married life (the two produce one child) with various extramarital sexual escapades. Her first splurge happens in Rio, early in the marriage, with Germano, a cosmopolitan and filthy-rich older man. (Peyton is a travel agent now.) Years later, closing in on 50, Peyton has the hots for this Chinese guy in Hong Kong, a thief preying on rich airline passengers; but again, the sex is wild, which makes it all okay. After he dumps her, Peyton hits rock bottom. We leave her in Antwerp, lice in her hair, nowhere to turn. Occasional flashes of humor (the honeymoon is a good comic sketch), but overall dreary and joyless: those sexcapades aside, the novel is permeated by a disgust for the body that extends to Peyton suckling her baby. (Kirkus Reviews)

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!