Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shining City, July 10, 2008
Life for Marcus Ripps is becoming complicated. Marcus, the production manager for a toy company, has a huge mortgage, ever increasing bills, and an elaborate bar mitzvah to finance. His wife Jan is entangled in a business venture that isn't making any money and their sex life is suffering because of it. His live-in mother-in-law is ailing and facing surgery with no insurance. When Marcus's boss announces that the plant is moving to China and he must relocate to keep his job, it seems as if there are no easy answers. Marcus needs to find a way to take care of his family, but he can't find employment and the money is dwindling. Then he gets the news that his misanthrope brother Julian has died. Marcus and Julian weren't close, but it seems that Julian has left him an inheritance. It's a dry cleaning business, and it's the answer to his financial woes. But while investigating his new acquisition, Marcus discovers that the business is a front for a prostitution ring, complete with the women, the clients, and an offbeat Russian gangsta henchman. Initially, Marcus wrestles with his conscience about the change in fortune: how can a middle class dad become a pimp? But the family's needs outweigh his concerns, and he jumps in headfirst. What ensues is the strange and fantastic story of Shining City. Marcus strives to be an ethical pimp, offering his girls 401k plans and health insurance, book clubs and paid vacations. But despite his good intentions, the byproducts of the lifestyle begin to creep into the business. Soon Marcus must deal with threatening bodyguards, a rival pimp, and an attempt on his life. But as he discovers, it's too easy to stay in, and much too unrewarding to get out, plus he still has a bar mitzvah to pay for! The stakes get ridiculously high, and Marcus must decide if he should abandon his new venture before trouble ultimately finds him.
The story told in this book was wickedly funny and wonderfully inventive. I found myself giggling throughout the ride, never being able to predict the twists and turns to come. The subplot involving Plum, Jan's business partner who wants get pregnant and have a child so she could videotape the full experience for an avant-garde art piece, was so bizarrely comical that I marveled at the author's ingenious imagination. Though the book dealt with the touchy subject of prostitution, it was not vulgar or crass in the depiction of the business. The focus, rather, was on Marcus and his experiences with the women and the conundrums he faced as a result of his decisions. The book was exceedingly clever and creative, never missing the punch line, and it sustained the humor throughout. It was pitch perfect, and wildly divergent from most other humorous offerings I've read.
Marcus was a very engaging character. Though pushed into a life of crime, he had all the family values that made him respectable. He was a loving and faithful husband, a doting father and a loving son-in-law. He read philosophy, struggled to understand his new circumstances, and dealt with dishonorable people honorably. I liked Marcus so much that it was easy to accept his moral slide. Marcus's incredulity at his situation combined with his self-effacing attitude made his plight affecting and interesting. Marcus was a genuine character and was easy to relate to. Some of the funniest sections of the book occur as a running monologue in his head when he is faced with perplexities.
One of the things that I found impressive about this book was the level of complexity each character had. From Marcus's pole dancing mother-in-law to the devout lesbian rabbi, each was constructed with abundant detail and expertise. The ability of the author to create such meaty characters took it to a greater level of storytelling that I found fascinating. I wanted more strangeness and idiosyncrasy, and the author delivered abundantly.
I enjoyed this atypical and creative story. The narrative propelled itself along in a very unexpected and diverting way that made it an easy and pleasurable read. It managed to be amusing, while not being trite. I would definitely recommend this book to those who would like an entertaining summer read.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"A living thing desires above all to vent its strength.", July 14, 2008
Marcus Ripps, the main protagonist of this novel, through a series of life`s unexpected turns, finds his niche in the most unlikeliest of places. In the process he becomes a type of new age management consultant in a world of wh*res and pimps and criminals even as he attempts to successfully run an underground escort service called the Shining City "Dry Cleaner," left to him by Julian, his older brother who as the story opens has abruptly expired from a heart attack.
Marcus' story begins in the hardscrabble neighborhood Van Nuys, Los Angeles, "a gamey corner of the San Fernando Valley" where he lives with his loving wife Jan, their son, Nathan, and Jan's mother Lenore who has come to live with the family because of her ailing health.
When Marcus isn't spending his time dipping into age-old philosophy texts to focus his mind, he's trying to desperately to vent a will to mediocrity that just doesn't seem to be working. When his job as production manager for Wazoo, a toy manufacturing business goes belly-up, little does Marcus know that he is about to be about to be sucked into the maelstrom of global progress, even as he turns down a lucrative offer to manage the company in China from "the God of Unbridled money," his boss, Room Primus.
Even Jan, who runs Ripcord, an alternative clothing boutique with her best friend Plum, is having trouble keeping her head above rocky financial waters. Ripcord, with its constant mercantile demands is just not providing the creative outlet Jan craved; and then there's the difficulties with Plum who decides she wants to have a baby to add to a piece of video art. No matter who much she gets rejected in the art world, Plum's desire to make art remains undiminished.
So with the pounding heat of a Los Angeles summer acting as a fiery backdrop, Marcus begins his operation, attacking his new found career with a type of unbridled optimism even as he battles becoming a "miscreant and a procurer of human flesh." No longer forced to argue with Jan over being 80,000 in debt, The Ripps even enough money to pay for Nathan's tuition at Winthrop Hall, a prestigious private school that's a hothouse of ambition, over-achievement and large investment portfolios.
Although Marcus can't begin to divine Julian's intention with his ludicrous last will and testament, he remains grateful for what his brother had done and makes plans for his "girls "to be treat as individuals and with dignity, content to enforce a caring management style. After all, life for Marcus and his family is sure to go into a new direction, the time short, lucrative and sweet..
A true Los Angeles story, author Seth Greenland gradually introduces us to the major players, a foamy mélange of characters as Marcus' begins his tumultuous journey into the LA flesh trade: There's Amstel a blond beauty from Eastern Europe whose past work as a prostitute comes back to haunt Marcus in unexpected ways; and also Kostya who served as a driver, personal assistant, and general factotum for Julian and who ends up helping Marcus shoulder much of the day- to-day operation of the business.
But at the center of it all is Marcus - and later Jan - who when she finds out about her husband's lucrative escapade, attacks the operation with a new type of gusto, working to increase their revenues and reposition the business as they aim for a more exclusive clientele, while also trying to keep themselves below the radar of the law.
Naïve by nature, the Ripps`, just don't think that the skin trade maybe connected to the criminal underworld, where the freaky clients can be alive at one moment and dead at the next and where pimps and their girls can sometimes have difficulty separating reality from fantasy. Toss in Plum as a self-confessed dominatrix and a trip to dump the body of a client in the Los Angeles forest, along with a sex toy in the form a vibrating egg with a chip in it - and Marcus indeed gets to play in play in this dirty - but always irreverently funny - underworld. Mike Leonard July 08.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Everything Shiny & Bright, July 14, 2008
From the first page of Seth Greenland's new novel Shining City, I was hooked. It was sharp, hilarious, timely, and simply fun to read--a scathing satire with a warm, cuddly heart-filled middle.
I recommended it in my July 9 review for Lei Chic, a daily email magazine in Hawaii, wherein I remark that "Greenland's exacting characterization and pithy descriptions cleverly position this ludicrous plot somewhere between a laugh-out-loud farce and an illuminating portrait of modern society's moral ironies and unbelievable dilemmas. [It's] the perfect novel for a time when To pimp or not to pimp? is everybody's real-life question."
-Christine Thomas, Lei Chic
Read the entire review here:
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