Like Being Killed [Paperback]

Ellen Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1998

An astounding tour-de-force exploration of the limits of self-destruction and the possibilities of redemption. Narrated by a young woman distinguished by her humor as well as her encyclopedic knowledge of literature, physics, and pharmacology--this novel has all the hallmarks of literary sensation. "I could never predict what was going to ruin me and what was going to rescue me," says Ilyana Meyerovich. In her squalid Lower East Side apartment, masochism and nihilism form the twin poles of Ilyana's heroin-blurred existence. When Ilyana encounters true friendship in the form of Susie Lyons, having no precedent for it, she cannot help but destroy it. Susie's genuine affection and calm, centered presence tug Ilyana out of her depression, dark memories, and existential despair, but not far enough that Ilyana is willing or able to act to save Susie from her own innocence. The consequences are devastating, until Ilyana meets with the hope of redemption, for herself and for Susie. Ellen Miller shows us a world where the desperate desire for connection to something larger than the isolated self takes many forms. Like Being Killed's starkly alienated protagonists and their disturbing, fascinating lives rise from the page with scorching power in this harrowing, cathartic tale of human struggle. * An astonishing literary debut, by a wholly original young novelist, in the tradition of Dorothy Allison, author of the acclaimed Bastard Out of Carolina.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like its narrator?overweight, overeducated, cynical 25-year-old East Village junkie Ilyana Meyerovich?Miller's debut is a downer too smart to write off, a ramshackle, sentimental novel distinguished by a voice full of vibrant, self-loathing intelligence. We first meet Ilyana at her friend Gerry's morose, coke- and heroine-snorting 33rd birthday. The party, which ends in Gerry's death by overdose, breaks up their druggy clique and prompts Ilyana to get serious about her life's work?not her day job, temping (ironically) for a publisher of self-help books?but her vocation: self-annihilation through drugs and masochistic sex. On the way down, she recounts the travails that have brought her to this pass: chiefly, a lonely childhood in a miserable, working-class Brooklyn family and a wrecked friendship (beautifully rendered by Miller) with her former roommate, big, square, loving, "Ivory Soap" girl Susie Lyons. Before Miller halts Ilyana's plunge toward suicide (as if by magic, sad to say) and reunites Ilyana with Susie, she shows a great, erratic talent doomed by the redemptive machinery of the up-from-addiction genre. Despite the weak ending and an embarrassment of half-baked Big Themes (Ilyana's lost Jewishness, the mental illness that may run in her Holocaust-haunted family, her childhood suffering at the hands of reckless doctors), Miller's literate, high-Romantic irony, psychological acuity and keen observations of the rickety friendships that addicts cultivate all set her apart from the smack pack. At heart she's more Thomas DeQuincy than Luke Davies or Irvine Welsh; her wonderful Ilyana is one of the more memorable misfits in recent fiction.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Ilyana Meyerovich is smart, well educated, and a heroin addict. Her story, told in lacerating prose, can be off-putting; as LJ's reviewer complained, "Miller ultimately says little about the toll of drugs or the isolation of modern life" (LJ 6/1/98). But the San Francisco Chronicle called Ilyana "the most electric, highly original narrator in recent memory," further observing that this book "does no less than remind us why we read." No wonder it made the Chronicle's best sellers list.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (August 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525943722
• ISBN-13: 978-0525943723
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #428,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The World Is Like A Cucumber, December 15, 1999

By 

Joelle Brown (Stockton, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Like Being Killed (Paperback)

Ellen Miller writes eloquently and vividly. Like Being Killed is a page turner beautifully written. The story digs beyond the surface of a promiscuous, masochistic woman and her fetish for heroin. Social issues such as AIDS, sex, and addiction are intertwined with the story of a woman seeking self-sanction. Unsettling sex scenes with a sadistic plumber are graphic and austere. After reading this book, you will never look at a cucumber the same way again. Drugs are not glorified in this piece of literature; they are portrayed as truth-revealing components. Miller conveys realistic consequences to narcotic-related actions without imposing her morality in any way, shape, or form. Of course, Like Being Killed, has its problems. The friendship between main characters Susie and Ilyana is established weakly, and they seem to go from love to hate to love with one puff of the pipe. The ending is not as well-rounded as the reader hopes, but this attempt from a new writer is both promising and refreshing. Like Being Killed has to be one of the best books I have read this year. It is both profound and thought-provoking. It explores the essence of existence in a world filled with complex decisions, all the while delivering a large dose of humor. All in all, a great read.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOAH DUDE, June 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Like Being Killed (Paperback)

It's a bit humbling to admit, but I've never in my life gotten more involved with a novel than this one. I began to pray, in the middle of my 'relationship', with, or more accurately my 'addiction' to, this novel, that it would pay off, it would look up and see the sun and not end as terribly bleakly as it begins. I imagined that if it ended badly, it could put me in bed for weeks, I was so involved. Well, it works out. It looks up.

Overall, it was like putting on glasses for the first time, seeing a motion picture film for the first time, getting kissed for the first time. I hadn't known a book could be so vivid, could punch me square in the eye like this. I was wed to it, reading it in bed until long past 12, dodging phone calls, taking it with me everywhere.

I will admit that I can see how some people could find the language overbearing and showboaty, a lot of big words are used, and it's occasionally annoying or disruptive. But overall, this is an amazing book. If you can take it. I want to say to the prospective reader, be careful! It'll change you. It's dark, gory, terrifying, and terribly honest.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poison and Balsam (Nietzsche), November 14, 2003

By 

Rev. William C. Green (Shaker Heights, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Like Being Killed (Paperback)

Bill Green, Shaker Heights, Ohio.

A harrowing story of love and loss and still loving, this novel is a gripping tale and an exercise in moral reflection perhaps best summed up in Neitzsche's remark, "From your poison you brewed your balsam." The poison is heroin--but heroin also as a metaphor of having and wanting, as applicable to everyday life as to a world of more obvious craving.

Miller refuses to dissociate the vile and the virtuous. Hope has as much to do with the depths as with the heights of life. Redemption is no resolution but the heart and sheer fact of survival, which is assurance enough.

Miller writes with the lucidity and concision of Kafka and the gusto of Nietzsche, with a compelling feel for everyday reality and sentiment. She speaks as easily of the pleasures of baking a pie as she does of matters so revolting as to turn away any with a weak stomach.

This combination of brutal honesty and affection for the commonplace makes for what is surely one of the most unusual and thought-provoking novels on the market.