High Maintenance [Mass Market Paperback]

Jennifer Belle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2, 2002

The author of the outrageous, hilarious Going Down—named Best New Novelist by Entertainment Weekly—returns with her second novel: the story of an obsessive love affair between a woman and an apartment.

The publication of her sexy, offbeat, riotous first novel, Going Down, won Jennifer Belle raves from Time ("an exceptionally funny writer") to Entertainment Weekly ("a wonderful, aberrant, compulsively readable novel"). Going Down was sold around the world, film rights were optioned by Madonna, and Belle was compared to everyone from Dorothy Parker and Lorrie Moore to J. D. Salinger and Liz Phair. What it all added up to was the arrival of a vivid, inimitable comic voice.

High Maintenance is another brilliantly twisted New York story that is as funny, sad, painful, ridiculous, wild, daring, and lovable as its predecessor. Set in the manic world of New York real estate, it tells the story of Liv Kellerman, a young woman who's just left her husband and, more important, their fabulous penthouse apartment with its Empire State Building view. On her own for the first time in her life, she relocates to a crumbling Greenwich Village hovel and contemplates her next move. Before long she finds her true calling: selling real estate. With her native eye for prime properties and an ability to lie with a straight face, Liv finds success and soon is swimming with the sharks—the hardcore, cutthroat brokers who'll do anything to close a deal. Along the way she picks up a maniacally ardent architect who likes to bite her, a few hilarious bosses, strange and exasperating clients, and a gun, and brings them with her on her search for the one thing she's really after—a home.

Belle's gift for creating strange and winning characters and her acute observations of both the absurd and the poignant in everyday life are the hallmarks of her fiction. High Maintenance is generous and unsparing, tough and exciting and terrifically smart—a hot new property on the market.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brimming with Gotham references, weird but lovable characters and typical urban scenes, Belle's second novel (after Going Down, which won her the title of Entertainment Weekly's Best New Novelist of 1996) is a witty and engaging tale of love and real estate in Manhattan. Liv Kellerman is 26 and recently divorced. In classic New York fashion, she's more upset about leaving her snazzy uptown digs than being single. Too proud to ask her wealthy father for money and lacking an advanced degree, she hits the pavement in search of a job and an apartment two things every 20-something in the city has had to struggle to secure. After she finds herself a shabby one-bedroom in Greenwich Village, "five flights above a 'restaurant' called King Shawarma," she works on employment. Liv ventures into the cutthroat world of real estate, gets her license and is soon spending her days showing TriBeCa lofts to the city's most discriminating clients. She's surprisingly good at it, and her new profession turns out to be therapeutic, too her forays into Manhattan's most wanted apartments teach her a thing or two about her own inner workings. Like all New York stories, this one features an eccentric romance: here, a noncommittal boyfriend with a proclivity for biting (at one point, Liv must visit an animal hospital to have her ear reattached to her head). Belle's tongue-in-cheek style and laugh-out-loud antics keep the pages turning. Despite the lack of a riveting story line, this latest addition to the booming yuppie fiction genre is fresh and invigorating. 8-city author tour. (May 7)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This work continues in the same tradition of Belle's highly praised first novel, Going Down (LJ 5/1/96), with equal parts hilarity and pain. Liv Kellerman has just left her husband after discovering his philandering. Never having been on her own before, she embarks on a new career in real estate. This novel is all New York from its high-priced apartments to its quirky characters. Liv begins dating an obsessive architect who likes to bite her. She finds a gun in a bathroom and keeps it, using it to scare aforementioned boyfriend when he turns out to be a liar and a cheat. Adjusting to a Greenwich Village dump after living in a penthouse, Liv shows fabulous apartments to clients who can't decide whether or not to buy them. Belle's portrayal of Liv's ups and downs, successes and failures are in turn funny and poignant. Interspersed are laugh-aloud lines: "When I got home I got undressed and a single pea fell out of my bra. I had gone to work with a pea in my bra and not even known it. Some princess, I thought." The film rights to Belle's first novel were optioned by Madonna; this one should have equal success. Highly recommended.
- Kathy Ingels Helmond, Indianapolis-Marion Cty. P.L.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; 2nd edition (July 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157322930X
• ISBN-13: 978-1573229302
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (110 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #770,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Completely enjoyable, June 1, 2001

By 

Jennifer Robinson (Newbury Park, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Maintenance (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read "Going Down," a couple of years ago and have been eagerly awaiting Jennifer Belle's new novel. I wasn't disappointed by this one-in fact, I actually laughed out loud in several parts. The story is compelling and fascinating, Liv is so real that it's painful (and embarrassing when you realize you have been in the same types of situations), and I just couldn't put it down. She's the kind of writer that makes you want to re-read her work several times because you always find something new to love. I was definitely sad to see it end and already looking forward to her next novel!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It made me laugh out loud..., July 6, 2001

By 

KSG "ksgnyc" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Maintenance (Hardcover)

This book is very funny and very black. Ms. Belle's unique and profound sarcastic comments are non-stop. If you like Sex in the City and have fond memories of Tama Janowitz this may be for you. It made me laugh out loud all day on the beach yesterday. I have not read Going Down, but now I'm looking forward to it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even better than "Going Down", May 6, 2001

By 

Jennifer (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Maintenance (Hardcover)

I am a huge fan of Ms. Belle's first book, "Going Down", and I have been waiting for years for her next book to come out, and I was certainly not disappointed.

"High Maintenance" is extremely funny and well written -- I'm glad to know there are still women out there that are not afraid to be sarcastic. Many of the books published about young single women these days are not very realistic, and it was refreshing to read a voice that was true to life. Not only did this book make me laugh out loud, but it was the rare kind of book that I could not wait to get home to keep reading -- although that did not last too long since I devoured it pretty quickly.

I only hope that Ms. Belle does not wait so long to write her third novel; in the meantime, I have every intention of re-reading "High Maintenance" -- and I have not re-read a book since I was a child.