Product Description

WHAT IS LOVE?

In the game of love, there are winners and losers. In THE LOSERS' CLUB, Richard Perez tries to answer the eternal question. Set in downtown New York City, THE LOSERS' CLUB tells the story of Martin Sierra, an unlucky writer addicted to the personals. His journey brings us into the East Village, pre-9/11—and in contact with Nikki, his dream woman, who remains unattainable romantically yet becomes his friend and confidant during his illuminating misadventures. Populated with characters and surprises few will ever forget, this energetic, comic novel is as much about a generation (we won't say "X") as it is about a specific time and place.

"THE LOSERS' CLUB is a vibrant and hopeful anthem for all of us 'losers' who choose not to wallow (for too long!) in our despair and who find the will to keep searching."—Heather Lowcock, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Lexington KY*

BOOK SENSE 76 TOP TEN PICK!*

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73141 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Joanne Greenberg, author: I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN
"A story of youth, very well told, and it dwells in the mind long after a reader finishes it."

Poppy Z. Brite, author: LOST SOULS, LIQUOR: A NOVEL
"I couldn’t put it down. It’s a brave book with a great deal of heart."

Madison Smartt Bell, author: ALL SOULS' RISING, TEN INDIANS
"Along with all its flamboyant extremes...an appealingly old fashioned love story at its core."

Customer Reviews

Why This Uncoventional Novel Has a Cult Following
'The Losers' Club' is the story of Martin Sierra, an aspiring writer in New York's East Village during the mid 1990s, as he searches for relationships with a future and meaning in life. The reader follows Martin, rejected professionally and personally, as he feeds his body through a dead-end job as a shipping clerk and attempts to feed his soul through appreciation of the East Village Art Life. He searches futilely for a woman who will respect his abilities as a poet, a writer, a lover and a friend. His friendship with Nikki is ongoing when the book begins. Bisexual, Nikki is attainable romantically because of a continuing but ultimately doomed relationship. She spends time with Martin and the two connect physically, however Martin's emotional longing for her seems one-sided. Martin is addicted to the personal ads, although he finds rejection there as well. The damaged women who contact him are a physical manifestation of the commercial publishers who reject his craft - commercial, promiscuous, disloyal, selfish. As he pursues 'The Art Life,' it becomes clear that the associated freaks and weirdos of the East Village clubs represent Martin's own preference for pain over feeling nothing, that and other people's scorn over being perpetually ignored. Martin's need for validation seems to emanate from the fact that his mother ignored him as a child, placing her budding career as a poet over her role as a caregiver. This is not a perfect novel, parts of it are raw a la Bukowski, other parts seem underwritten, and overall the book seems fragmentary, but I must admit that I liked it. Almost more than I wanted to. The imagery is always razor-sharp; it's fast-moving, some of the dialogue really killed me -- hilarious, and it's written with genuine heart.

Fun Book
This is a novel I truly enjoyed.

The down-and-out story is about Martin Sierra, a young writer wannabe (Bukowski idolizer), who finds himself in a deep rut: he can't get published; he hates his dead-end job, which is way below his potential; and, to make matter worse, he can't find a girlfriend - or even a simple date - to save to his life.

Enter the downtown personals. It was through the personal ads that Martin first met Nikki, who appears to be the only friend lonesome Martin has, as he wanders from bookstore to club to bar in downtown New York City, looking to connect with a kindred spirit. Nikki is his kindred spirit, except for one problem: bisexual, she appears to be mired in the last stages of a stagnant relationship with a "rebound" lover who is female.

Life is complicated. And Martin's deep affection - even adoration - for Nikki seems to inspire him or at least prevent him from sinking completely under. Martin's life is not turning out as he planned and all his earlier literary potential - he was something of shinning star in school - seems to be going to waste - or ignored in the "real" world.

As Nikki remains stuck in her own personal rut and unable to make changes or commit to something more than friendship to Martin, Martin takes up the ads in earnest, meeting a odd variety of gals. One, Lola, is a neurotic painter living the East Village, another is "Amaris," a goth and young mother - but also a college teacher with "control issues," who apparently underscores her authority by sleeping with her own students.

This is actually a comic novel, and there is an influence of early David Sedaris (Naked) and Augusten Burroughs (Running With Scissors). The narrative of The Losers' Club is broken up into short, lively chapters, and told with a kind of manic energy that is both engaging and fun.

Perez writes bluntly with a kind of single-minded focus and lack of irony that would differentiate him from a Dave Eggers, say. As a shaggy dog tale, The Losers' Club has a kind of scruffy charm. Like Charles Bukowski, a gutter poet who down-and-out Martin seems to emulate and idolize, there is a kind simplicity in the language, here - but also a tendency to veer toward the vulgar, one of main faults of the book. Perez is sometimes a little too enamored of the seediness and grit of Manhattan's East Village: he lingers in depicting details of the bizarre subculture that apparently existed there pre-9/11, the era in which this novel takes place.

In the end, though, I must highly recommend this book, if only because it's so entertaining - and so unusual, so distinct from the majority of touted novels running up and down the bestseller's list today. It's not for everyone, as I've stated, but it's a unique, sometimes strange, occasionally sad, but often funny novel that you're not likely to forget.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Loser
Barcelona is worlds away from New York City. Right? You wouldn't expect someone from Spain to know much about the club scene, drag queens, or frustrated artists of the East Village, would you? When would I have ever found myself a magnet for freaks while the girl I've spent my every aching second pining for only thought of me as 'friendship' material?

Have you wallowed in unrequited love? Have you ever gone to dance clubs? Have you ever squirmed violently in the orgiastic throng of a concert audience, adding your own pressure to the mass at the stage like so many sperm beating against an egg? The pulse throbbing in you still as you left the building, vibrating you like a bell?

Okay, so maybe not all of this is universal. Suffice it to say, Richard Perez's The Loser's Club rang familiar for me. Even though I've never been to the Village (or New York City). Even though that stage of life ended for me by age 22, and Perez's protagonist, Martin Sierra, is in his latter twenties.

Martin is an Export Assistant at Japan World Transport. He hates it, of course, and spends most of his time on the phone or on the photocopier, checking for messages on his personal ad or copying poetry for submission to whichever journal will reject him next. I hope I'm not the only one who's been there-a collection of cold form letters from publishers your only greeting after each day at a meaningless job.

The fascination for the personals keeps Martin going day to day. What better way to people-watch than to actually set up a meeting with the watchee? Martin's obsession certainly has a hollowness to it. But it's more than idle curiosity. Once upon a time he fell in love with someone he met through the personals. Nikki. And now? They're best friends. The word is a curse. Perhaps Martin is continually trying to reenact their first meeting. As if getting it right somehow would break the spell and free him and Nikki to move beyond friendship. As for the idea that Martin is searching for his possibly abusive, definitely mysterious missing mother, I don't buy it. Were that the case he'd never have developed more feeling for Nikki than he does for any of the others.

These others form quite a menagerie. In the novel two figure prominently. Lola is an art student who lives with her mother and paints absurdly violent images. Amaris has a son and believes in vampires. Martin starts seeing both, and things are progressing in each case, through no urgency of his own. But however insignificantly mundane Martin's life may seem, with its pointless daily carousel of work, alcohol, arranged meetings and clubs, it can still come crashing down. When it does, he finds that the only thing left is something he hadn't even started with.

This is actually a formulaic romance. In fact, the climax and resolution are a little too much, the dream triggering them a deus ex machina.

Yet the book surprises with some excellent writing. There's no question Perez can tap into the era he's portraying. And the dialogue is natural, entirely credible. Dance clubs, including mosh pits, are very well described. And moments like Martin's searching for a parking spot, asking women sitting in their cars if they're leaving and invariably being told no, are exquisite.

The frustrated artist aspect of Martin's personality is underdeveloped. When the mountain of rejection letters is introduced, the description is prosaic-a lost opportunity for Kafkaesque indulgence. But I love the discussion of journals requiring SASEs, the humiliation of providing the vehicle for your own rejection. And I suppose this aspect of Martin's character is little more important than his parking woes, or his inability to skip stones on a pond, or the fact that a club lacks his preferred draft. The point of each is to reflect on his love life.

Martin himself is far from the typical romantic lead. He's too much the good-for-nothing-but-the-appreciation-of-irony post-Gen-Xer. I suspect most readers will either find him unendurably dull or succumb to a nostalgic sympathy. But one thing I find remarkable about him is the fact that, like any genuine person, he's not entirely at ease in his context. Perez doesn't portray him as too streetwise, nor too naïve. Instead, Martin has an open mind. He doesn't surprise easily. At the same time, there are drugs he's never heard of, he doesn't know what a 'swatch' is, Amaris's sexual confessions shock him, and despite his sophistication his enjoyment of silly sci-fi movies is not purely ironic. The girls themselves are interesting characters, but hardly dynamic. Lola and Amaris are props, really, and Nikki seldom more real than the Grail. Of course, that's as it should be. That's the point: she isn't tangible. She's a dream. And isn't everyone entitled to have a dream or two when they're young?

What I like most about The Loser's Club is the lack of pretension. To me this novel comes off as entirely unassuming. This isn't an overly fraught narrative like academia would relish. Neither does it strain too hard to excite the interest of mainstream young adults. Its perspective (from Martin) is straightforward. Simple and observant, as a disinterested good-for-nothing-but-unremarkable-introspective-poetry guy should be. I found myself enjoying this story despite its weaknesses. Despite the fact that it's not 'important' and that it recreates an era that isn't yet old enough to be cool again. Why? Because at one point I would have identified closely with Martin (except for the weird mother stuff, thank heavens). If the same might be true for you, I'd recommend the book.