Have You Seen Me?: A Novel [Paperback]

Laura Denham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 26, 2002

Laura Denham’s first novel about a young woman’s willful descent from part-time stripper, to self-employed prostitute, to low-rent S and M film star adroitly sidesteps the expectations inherent in sex-industry tell-alls, opting instead for an aesthetic closer to the edgy, skillfully composed narratives of Mary Gaitskill and Jennifer Belle. Juliet McKenna, the novel’s protagonist, heads to San Francisco just after college, filled with a mix of restless audacity and vulnerability. Her peculiar disposition proves to be relatively harmless at first: topless dancing at the Cherry Tree. But she quickly succumbs to the lucrative possibilities offered by the more insidious elements of the business. Written in concise, thoughtful prose, Have You Seen Me? details Juliet’s exploits with lonely hedonists and sex-crazed reprobates; from Mary, the speed snorting methadone nurse turned born-again environmentalist, to Monty, the bondage-enthusiast son of a Jesuit priest, Juliet sits comfortably amongst inhabitants of an odd world of sleaziness and aspiration. Yet, even as Juliet’s corrupted endeavors bankrupt her spirit, the possibility for renewal remains. And while her eventual regeneration at a commune of radical environmentalists (whose terrorist activities are unbeknownst to her) provides for an entertaining twist in her story, Have You Seen Me? remains a deeply affecting novel about the uncertainty and loneliness of the human soul.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Of course, we're all trying to find ourselves. It's when you have other people looking for you that you know you're really lost," muses Juliet, the former stripper, prostitute, speed addict and resident of an ecoterrorist commune at the center of Laura Denham's first novel, Have You Seen Me? After an unconventional but relatively wholesome upbringing by hippie parents in Northern California in the 1980s, the likable, sharply observant Juliet gets swept up in San Francisco's sex industry and is soon awash in drugs and money as her "career" spins out of control, and she finally disappears into the commune. Denham has a surprisingly assured, captivating voice. She avoids the pitfalls of this potentially lurid subject matter, offering a thoughtful exploration of the effect of the 1960s counterculture on another generation of lost youth.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A child of 1960s hippies, Juliet barely remembers her British mother, who died young. She is raised by her biker father, a computer expert in the Silicon Valley back when systems people were eccentric and underpaid. While under his roof, she has her first sexual experience with his best friend, who gives her hepatitis B. After college, she drifts to San Francisco, where she falls into the sordid world of strip dancing, porno flicks, and prostitution and then pulls herself out. Like many first novels, this work is often flawed but forgivably so because it reveals something about human nature while suggesting how the author may develop. True, Juliet is strangely remote for a first-person narrator and seems surprisingly unharmed by her life; she is evidently more upset by a bad bikini shave than her own degradation. In addition, the novel's odd final episode in a Santa Cruz ecoterrorist commune doesn't ring true. Yet Juliet remains a likable character, and the novel's early pages show poetic flair and real promise. For larger fiction collections.
Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 1st Carroll & Graf Ed edition (July 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786710624
• ISBN-13: 978-0786710621
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,128,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars searing, evocative debut explores degradation, redemption, December 30, 2002

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Have You Seen Me?: A Novel (Paperback)

Bristling with frightening imagery and evoking both revulsion and admiration, Laura Denham's exceptional debut novel, "Have You Seen Me?" brings both depth and hard-earned wisdom to the coming-of-age genre. Her protagonist, by the time she has graduated from college, has had to endure not only sexual trauma (brought on after a cruel seduction by her father's best friend) but a childhood shorn of family coherence. Juliet has grown up in Santa Cruz, California, a haven for 1960s' flower children who seem to have no clue as to how to raise a child other than permit them to be "free."

Juliet's freedom includes calling her father Tom instead of Dad, suffering through a horrendous bout of hepatitis during high school, and being initiated into sex with a man old enough to be her father. By the time she has graduated from college with a dual major of psychology and dance, Juliet's self-image, never strong, has withered. San Francisco, with its promise of anonymity, provides a near-perfect backdrop for her descent into emotional numbness, physical degradation, and existential isolation. First as a stripper and eventually as a self-employed prostitute, Juliet doesn't so much live as sleepwalk through life. Her self worth erodes so terribly that she identifies with the ruins of the Loma Prieta earthquake: "only things worth rebuilding were repaired. Things that were too shaky to survive were either torn down or simply left alone."

To fill the void of a life without any close human contact, Juliet selects degrading masochism. Her job as a stripper brings her into contact with men whom she despises. The men who ogle her lithe, seemingly child-like body, are "self-centered, style-obsessed, rich spoiled children. I came to hate them...and I despised their divisive, computer-fixated culture." The customers would have "one hand on their persistently full, warm beer, and the other on their persistently full, warm crotch." Though Juliet begrudingly comes to assess the club dancers as "honest, clean, intelligent, friendly women," she eventually abandons dance and descends into pornography and prostitution.

Lacking any model of social responsibility or interpersonal contact based on mutual respect or trust, Juliet thrashes about in an emotional wilderness. Only catastrophy catapults her into the possibility of human redemption, through life in a secluded commune near her childhood home. It is through the artistic integrity of her creator that Juliet's struggle for genuine self understanding and acceptance gains universal status. Laura Denham's portrait of a young woman tortured by demons -- some imposed by wrongdoers, others self-inflicted -- is extraordinary in its emotional scope and inspiring glimpses into a personality fractured by life.

Ms. Denham's talents encompass much more than characterization and powerful narrative. The author's imagery sparkles throughout the novel. One character's eyes are "two polished dimes dotted in the middle with a single drop of Indian ink. Aluminum with tiny holes cut into the center. Littler sterling planets. Mercury...a bad poet's day out." A purportedly healthy yogurt drink "tastes like something that might have dripped out from between my legs, only flavored with strawberries." Ms. Denham can flat-out write.

"Have You Seen Me?" is a slim novel with great impact. Featuring a powerfully rendered protagonist, skilled dialogue and uncompromising glimpses of the seedier side of urban life, Laura Denham's first work is but a promise of an exciting literary career.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars TRYING TO FIND HERSELF, November 20, 2002

By 

G. Bowser "gloryb28" (NEW YORK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Have You Seen Me?: A Novel (Paperback)

Juliet is wondering who she is and ends up in San Francisco's tenderloin district. First she is astripper at a "no touch' sex clubwhere she dances and strips. Shecan sit with the customers and talk but no sex allowed. Thenshe breaks the rules and becomesa prostitute for a lot more easymoney as she calls it. She andMary become friends and they end up in a commune, unaware of itsreal purpose. Mary's parents kidnap her to take her home butJuliet has no one to save her until a friend of her father shows up.She returns to her original hometown wondering what to do next.This is Denham's fist novel and she doesn't do much to encourageJuliet to develop depth of character or learn much from herexperiences. It reads more like ascript to develop and explore butmaybe Denham herself will grow from this first attempt and come out fighting in her next book.

4.0 out of 5 stars A great little book, May 27, 2009

By 

S. Munnion (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Have You Seen Me?: A Novel (Paperback)

"Can you see me?" - with a title that may or may not be a nod to Laura's '60s cultural roots (Hendrix recorded a song of this title) the book explores San Fransisco's sex industry through a young and impressionable but determined and pragmatic woman. Her voyage through the human soul starts with dancing in a club and descends from there but the main character never looses her curiosity about human nature and she has an almost charitable tolerance for the weaknesses of men. The writing itself is passionate and colourful, with plenty of passages - I particularly liked a decription of cracks on a ceiling - for those who look for such things.

For myself I was simply prepared to go wherever the main character was prepared to go and pulling for her despite of - or perhaps because of her occasional blooms of female anger. I couldn't describe this book as a feminist novel but it certainly is ah humanist novel - revelling in the seediness of human nature if not actually condoning it.

Ultimately we are right there to a suprising conclusion and I recommend anybody interested in human stories to give it a go.