California Screaming: A Novel [Hardcover]

Doug Guinan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1998

Sexy, sardonic, and unerringly on target, this tory of love and intrigue among Hollywood's gay community sparkles with all the wit and delicious fun of a Jackie Collins bestseller combined with the sensibility of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City.

Kevin is a fashion photographer with a stalled career, gorgeous looks, and no future -- irrefutable proof that life is not fair. Then fate intervenes when he meets and seduces Hollywood's most eligible gay bachelor, Brad Sherwood, a multimedia mogul who's rich beyond belief.

All Brad needs to make his life complete is someone to adore -- and to adore him in return. When he finds Kevin, he is sure his life is finally perfect. For Kevin, the affair is great fun -- until he finds himself inconveniently falling in love. But since life is unfair, the doting pair soon learns that there is a great distance between the hot tub and a happy ending.

Interwoven with the adventures of Kevin and Brad are those of Kevin's roommate Leon, who, like every other gay man in Hollywood, is in lust with Kevin; of Brad's friend Rob, a former skating star who now produces ice extravaganzas; and of Kim, a physical fitness trainer from Australia who uses Rob as his entry into Hollywood society, only to find in Leon the perfect way to make a satisfying exit.

Fresh, fun, and poignant, California Screaming marks the auspicious debut of novelist Doug Guinan, and is a must for gay men on all coasts, and for anyone looking for a flashy, irresistible read.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Hollywood has long been a target of satirical fiction, from Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? and John O'Hara's The Big Laugh to Michael Tolkin's The Player and Dennis Hensley's Misadventures in the (213). All that ego, glitz, and enormous lack of talent is just too deliciously bad to go unpunished. Doug Guinan's California Screaming is a nonstop cavalcade of comic invention and gentle invective that sends up Tinseltown, movies, male beauty, outing, body culture, social climbing, conniving, and the closet. With a plot that throws All About Eve and "Apartment 3G" into a blender with ingredients from a Feydeau farce, Guinan manages to hit most of his targets with deadly accuracy and even allows his characters some tender moments along the way. Never afraid to go over the top and always knowing when to stop, California Screaming is a perfect pop cultural artifact; like the most exquisite example of camp, it suggests the innate worth of the absurdities and excesses of contemporary life even as it wickedly ridicules them. --Michael Bronski

From Publishers Weekly

"The central fact" that Guinan tells us about his antihero, Kevin Mahony, in the second sentence of this sharp, sassy debut is "that he was extremely good looking." Indeed, Kevin's good looks, and the good use to which he puts them, are the central fact of the novel. After fleeing his native New York when his lover's Mafioso father threatens to mess up his pretty face, young Kevin lands in L.A. and proceeds to sleep his way to the topAi.e., the bed of mogul Brad Sherwood (a thinly veiled David Geffen), who moves him from the gay ghetto of West Hollywood to a penthouse on Westmount, gets him work as a photographer, plenty of expensive clothes and a Mercedes. Kevin occasionally suffers a pang of conscience, but mainly he fits right into the world of users, hangers-on and wannabes who populate Guinan's cold, funny, heartless gay L.A. If there is something reminiscent of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City in Guinan's attention to kitschy detail, his nightmare La-La Land includes none of Maupin's endearing eccentrics. Still, that hardly takes the fun out of this sexy, made-for-the-beach picaresque.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (June 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684849364
• ISBN-13: 978-0684849362
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,529,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun, irreverent, close-to-home. Gay fiction as it should be., April 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: California Screaming: A Novel (Hardcover)

Not the most sympathetic character you'll ever meet, Kevin embodies all that is glitz and glam about the party boy scene. Materialistic, and not just a little shallow, our hero cuts a wide swath through the gay world of West Hollywood.

By turns truly hilarious and truly sad, Doug Guinan succeeds in winning the reader over, creating characters at once pathetically jaded and ultimately redeemable.

Spend a nice day at the beach, and while you are out there, read this book!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book!, July 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: California Screaming: A Novel (Hardcover)

I've never read a book where I was laughing and wincing at the same time like this- the author's darts are so well placed. As a resident of the Wilshire Corridor and working in West Hollywood the thing I find most amazing is that Mr. Guinan's book is classified as fiction. It's all true!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gloriously Trashy and Suprisingly Full of Heart, September 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: California Screaming: A Novel (Paperback)

I was jumping around my apartment after I read this book. I got that same feeling you get after you'vd just talked to your biggest crush on the phone. I tore through this novel and cancelled all my Saturday night plans to finish it. I hated and loved the characters. And I recognized them which was sort of terryfing but thrilling. This is top notch gay satire and more than just a beach read. It sort of fills you with hope too. I want another one.