The Perv: Stories [Hardcover]

Rabih Alameddine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2, 1999

A provocative first collection of stories by the author of Koolaids

Following the publication of his critically acclaimed first novel, Koolaids, Rabih Alameddine offers a collection of stories that explores the experience of a number of Lebanese characters - men and women, gay and straight--whose lives have been blown apart by a disastrous civil war and the resulting international diaspora. Daring in style as well as content, these tales explore the relationships that anchor our hearts to the world -- father and son, grandson and grandmother, pedophile and 12-year-old boy, young man and woman of the streets, sister and sister, daughter and father, gay man and heterosexual, the quick and their dead.

Suffused by a yearning for what has been lost, these narratives are both experimental and traditional, humorous and disturbing, and confirm without doubt that Alemeddine is one of the most original and accomplished young writers to emerge in some time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The arresting title of this first collection from the author of the well-received novel Koolaids should not turn away readers who might discover Alameddine's considerable talents. Indeed, the eponymous novella seems purposely confrontational. The unnamed narrator, a gay man obviously dying of AIDS, corresponds with a pedophile named Bill. The dying man pretends to be a 13-year-old boy who has moved to San Francisco from Lebanon, and his letters are deliberately framed to encourage Bill's sexual cravings. The question that the story explicitly raises is the true nature of perversion: the narrator maintains that society at large is more perverted than the people it accuses of sexual transgression. He addresses the reader directly: "Do you ever think about what made me the way I am? You did." The remaining seven stories are equally edgy, acerbic and unsparing. Lebanon's proverbial breakdown is the black margin around everyone, whether the characters live in that country or have emigrated elsewhere. "The Changing Room" is an elegant, scathing memoir of an upper-class Lebanese boy sent off to an English boarding school in the '70s. While his country is falling into ruin, the boy moves from a war zone "directly into hell. Nothing prepared me for the cruelty of the English." The memoirist's vein is further pursued in "My Grandmother, the Grandmaster," in which an expatriated Lebanese writer recalls the role his mother's mother has played in his life, encouraging his intellectual talents that are derided by his rich but boorish father. She is a grande dame from an impeccable family line, but her genius in chess symbolizes the paradox of sexist Lebanon, where the chess association will not grant her recognition. The story displays the manners and mores of a ruling class on the brink of the abyss. These stinging narratives vibrate with an electrical tension that comes partly from Alameddine's penchant for the outrageous, partly from his unflinching view of a society in chaos. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The Lebanese-born author of Koolaids presents a thematically related collection of blunt, discomforting stories set largely in a Lebanese diaspora whose people reel from civil war and their own inability to find connection and peace. Several of the stories scrutinize the loneliness and anxiety of being gay in a disapproving community and in the continuing era of AIDS; "Duck" is an imaginative, nearly poetic series of fragments connecting a lover's slow death, a childhood duck hunt, a musing on suicide, and a Daffy Duck cartoon, while "The Changing Room" recounts life among outcasts in an English boarding school at a time of tragedy. The most spirited, triumphant story, "My Grandmother, the Grandmaster," recalls a chess match attended by the young narrator and his wily grandmother, who would become the only family member not to shun the narrator later in life. The long title story tells of a desperate sexual correspondence between a middle-aged man and a pubescent boy, at least one of whom is not as he seems. It is a confrontational introduction to a demanding but impressive book. For larger and specialized collections.AJanet Ingraham Dwyer, Columbus, OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (July 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312200412
• ISBN-13: 978-0312200411
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,912,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye Opener, November 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Perv: Stories (Hardcover)

Living in the Unites States, the war in Lebanon was what I saw on TV. Perhaps because of our bias media, I never felt pity like I did during the Kosovo problem. Reading this book made me realize what the war did to a wonderful people, the Lebanese. The author is brave and does not hesitate nor spare your feelings.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, October 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Perv: Stories (Hardcover)

This is an amazing book, outrageous, fun, heartbreaking and poingant. It is very different than the writer's Koolaids. I could not put it down. The title story shook me to the core. Great book.