Customer Reviews

Snake (High Risk Books)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mary Woronov has proven countlessly in film that she is a little off center. Her strange and intriging roles have made her a classic cult actress & even an icon. This, her 3rd novel interestingly mirrors the strangeness of her movies onto print. It's the story of a mixed up girl on a journey that's both terrifying and exciting. She tries to flirt with romance but her focus of interest could be a killer that may make her the next victim. Each chapter is titled with a snake theme as is the overall plot twists and turns much like a seemingly harmless snake would turn. Roll up under a blanket and enjoy a little piece of derainged fiction.

AND THE ANSWER IS YES. I wrote the Kirkus Review under Editorial Reviews and would direct you there for my comments on this noir knockout.

This novel is a hilarious romp through the seedy sides of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, until it becomes a love story, and then it's both a dark comedy and a poignant look at impossible relationships and the lengths people go to find intimacy. It's great.

I've been a fan of the other Mary Woronov's books, which I strongly recommend. She has style, her sentences are sharp as knives, and there's a vision of the world behind it. But "Snake", her first novel, is a little disappointing. Ms. Woronov still masters wonderfully the language, has an eye for the paradox, a wicked sense of humour, and, as a talented painter, knows the art of the detail. You won't get boring descriptions, although the settings, here, are as important as the characters. But this travelogue from rural America to the punk and S/M scene of LA, from the obviously hyperrealisitic Las Vegas to the gung-ho redneck world Idaho verges on territories that have been already explored by Barry Gifford or Harry Crews (whom is opportunely reminded by John Waters in the blurb; anyway, I couldn't understand why he drops the name of Hubert Selby Jr). The impression of déjà-vu is unavoidable, althoungh the single sequences (especially the beginning, where the childness is explored with the cruelty of a frightening fairy-tale) are superior to the whole. Anyway, Ms. Woronov loves sincerely her main character, (Cas)Sandra, who experiences ugliness and violence with an innocence which always avoids the risk of cheap postmodern cynism. But you can't help feeling nostalgia for the sense of risk and for the existential deepness of a road movie of the 70s. Now everything is predictable, especially the worst, and there is no more escape: but we already knew it. How difficult it is to tell new stories at the beginning of 21st century.

This is a book we've read before, or maybe it's that we've seen it on the screen, or maybe it's both. In any event, there's something rather tired about this collage of noir and road-trip cliches. You read Jim Thompson, Barry Gifford, Charles Willeford, et al? What might (and I use the word very guardedly) distinguish this book is that its protagonist is a woman, and its done from her perspective. That said, she's a cardboard characterization of a girl from a dysfunctional background (free spirit hippy turned bitter housewife mom, guilt-ridden longing looks from stepdad--oooo, haven't read/seen that before...) who runs away to the big city (LA) and wallows in lost identity and false bravado. I should note that the book jacket's claim that she is in "the LA punk scene" is completely untrue. She's in the S&M scene, which is totally different and separate. The book is a bit more surreal than its predecessors, and does have some really nice passages here and there, but it's otherwise completely forgettable.