Rent Boy
Ratings5
Average rating3.3
A noir tour-de-force set in the world of hustlers from "one of America's darkest and funniest chroniclers." (The Guardian) It's New York City, 1981, and everyone wants to be at the Emerson Club, from Cindy Crawford to Cindy Adams; from Famous Roger, one-time lion of the talk shows, to Sandy Miller, the “downtown” writer with the tattoos and the leather; from Lauren Hutton to the art star who does the thing with the broken plates. Everyone, that is, except Danny. Danny just works there, waiting tables to put himself through architecture school, turning tricks on the side. And when he’s not on the clock, he’s recording the sexual, aesthetic, and financial transactions that make up his life, in gruesome detail. But even a clever boy like Danny can wind up on the menu. Blinded by love for his fellow rent boy, Chip—as gorgeous as he is reckless—Danny is about to learn that there’s more than one way to turn your body into cash, and that cynicism is no defense when the real scalpels come out. A gimlet-eyed crime novel with an inventively filthy mind, Rent Boy is Gary Indiana at his most outrageous—and his best.
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This book is intense, short, and perfect. The narration here has a brilliant, effortlessly flowing, and smooth quality. It has made me very excited about delving into two or three additional works by Gary Indiana. Especially the first half of this book is so Holden Caulfieldy in that it's very bitchy, raw and deeply felt. The voice here has found the perfect balance in being rough around the edges with an emotional sensibility deep within and that just is so incredibly hard to nail. It was nailed in this book and as a result, no single word in this book feels like it can be dropped from the page.
What the f@ck did I just read? If I wanted this level of psuedo-intellectual goonslop I'd read the ads in the back pages of the local newspaper
1.5
The writing here is so spectacular that this book kind of feels like a car crash I can't look away from. I don't know. The second half of the novel is so much better than the first. We spent way too much time with the MC. A lot of the racism, misogyny, transphobia—actually, maybe all the -ias and-isms were present here and (surprise, surprise) I do not like it! I mean I guess I can understand the (“) creative decision (“) for such characteristics, and this is for sure a story where the author does not necessarily want his MC to be likeable, but I don't care for those stories. What's the point? To shock me? Well, I'm not shocked, just bored. This feels like such an “edgy” story written by a straight man, except it's not. We should've focused on the Emerson Club, that was the most interesting part of this story tbh. Such a disappointment. Cool cover though.
