Product Description

Suicidal Ilyana meets her opposite when she chooses to share her apartment with Susie. Both drawn and repelled by Susie's wholesome values, the two women will have a devastating effect on each other as Ilyana's obsession leads her into a downward spiral towards oblivion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2030774 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
First-novelist Miller pulls a minimum of punches in her grueling depiction of a young woman's heroin-assisted downward spiral. Since her youth in Bensonhurst, Ilyana, the only child of crude, abusive parents, "sensed heroin as an inevitable destination." Now a bookish Brown graduate, she lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the same neighborhood her grandparents had worked hard to escape. Ilyana does her best to resist friendships: such attachments seem inevitably to lead to loss. When her beloved roommate commits suicide, Ilyana replaces her with Susie, a big-boned mosaic maker who deflects Ilyana's reflexive cruelty and wears down her wariness with generosity and bad jokes. Effortlessly domestic, Susie even gets the nihilistic Ilyana to bake a peach pie. Initially, Ilyana is confused by Paul, Susie's nice-guy boyfriend, but then she gets at what's behind his lack of focus: that he's using heroin. He manipulates her into keeping it secret from Susie: and when Susie discovers her deception, she immediately moves out. Bereft, and ruminating on her lost friendship, Ilyana intensifies her own use and takes up with a slick pack of clever addicts - the sort who play parlor games predicting how each will die - but even that insubstantial circle evaporates when a gang member overdoses. Ilyana meticulously chronicles the degrading minutiae of the months that follow: her razor-sharp memory and ready grab-bag of scientific and literary references don't dissipate, but, rather, enrich her meditations on paralysis, consciously chosen loneliness, masochistic relationships (including a fling with Susie's Paul), and the decay of her bodily functions. It's only when Paul dies of AIDS, and Ilyana's suicidal wishes run rampant, that she opens herself to a redemption of sorts. Though the hopeful transformations feel a bit forced, Ilyana's voice is authentic in unsparingly illuminating the link between self-protection and self-destruction, revealing a tender inner life that persists despite addiction, depression, and descent into squalor. A bleak, bracing debut. (Kirkus Reviews)

TIMES
'Miller makes intelligent inroads into her [Susie's] head...'

TIME OUT
'Fans of the hygienic heroine should avoid'

Customer Reviews

Brilliant because it tells it how it is.
Like Being Killed pleased me with it's truth. In my opinion it is one of those rare books you read where you keep feeling 'yeh, that's exactly how it is- but I could never have phrased it so eloquently'.

Try this on friendship (quote from Blake): "Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: do be my enemy for friendship's sake" or what about this: " 'what's the point of knowing anybody?' I shrugged 'To thicken the plot. To hang out. To hold hands' ".

The grimness of addiction is truthfully portrayed as a choice. The numbness and insanity and pleasure. I think this is one of the most real books on Heroin and self destruction in the nineties. Read it if you want to know.

intelligent and entertaining
This isn't your typical story of addiction. This isn't a story of redemption or love, quite simply it is living months in the life of Ilyana Meyerovitch, a phenomenonally intelligent and self hating confused woman, who happens to be a heroin addict.
This is a well crafted story, with some unique insightfulness. I enjoyed reading Ilyana's take on life, on drugs, on living. There are some sex scenes, not graphic, but disturbing none the less.
This is a highly recommended first novel and I am impatient for the next!

I had to keep putting this book down to recover myself
Bits of this book give you the same feeling as watching a very gory operation; it is both disgusting and intriguing, you have to keep looking away and then turning back. Based in New York, the characters cling to their lives like grease to a pan and the author is not afarid to let them become more pungent by the day. Cucumbers, effluence and diluted blood figure along betrayal and small hopes. A good choice if you want to steer away from sweet, girly mush.