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Everyone's Burning: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "I was getting somewhere with the drinking when the superpowers started kicking in..." (more)
Key Phrases: fucking head, George Tatsis, Bell Boulevard, Carrie Fine (more...)

3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The disaffected 20-somethings of nonplace Bayside, Queens, are the subjects of this debut slice-of-life novel, in which the search for the next high is the primary goal. Leon Koch, 23, is at loose ends when his two best friends, Ortiz and Rahmer, get out of prison. In college on and off, and occasionally working, Leon spends most of his time hanging with a loose, shifting posse of friends, girlfriends and ex-girlfriends. Downing scotch in Big Gulp cups and snorting lines of coke, they watch TV, go to bars, eat junk food, throw up, get the shakes, hallucinate. Resigned to their lives, they call law-abiding, wage-earning citizens "normals" without envy. Romance and love are suspect, and sex is kinky and abusive. Leon's friends are all aware of the precariousness of their lives, and suicide is the answer for more than one. One girlfriend says, " `The difference between having a nice quiet dinner and everything being looted and raped and burned to the ground is this much.' She pushed that little space between her fingers at me." At one point, they toast a girl for never having been raped by her father. Flat and jarring in equal parts, Leon's first-person narration conveys the particular brand of anomie experienced by perpetual adolescents marooned in the bleakest stretches of urban sprawl. Sometimes the lack of plot and character growth give the reader an itching desire to get off Spiegelman's merry-go-round, but Leon, despite his drink- and drug-fueled numbness, has an authenticity that makes him worth knowing.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In this grim and assured debut, Spiegelman takes the reader on a nightmarish tour of the drug-fueled subculture of Queens. Leon Koch, a recent high-school graduate, leads a streamlined existence: his goals are to avoid getting killed by any of the neighborhood psychopaths who might have any grievance (real or imagined) against him and to make sure he has enough cocaine and alcohol to cushion his bleak existence. He bounces from one dead-end job to another and seeks out sadomasochistic relationships with the equally damaged women who make up his world. He allows himself to be swept up in his friends' ill-fated plans--busted drug deals or student protests gone awry--all the while knowledgeable of their limited chances of success. Yet, Spiegelman tempers this world's desolateness with Leon's compelling narrative: a world-weary and sardonic voice whose jitteriness belies the chemicals that course through his bloodstream. While some readers may be put off by the book's explicit descriptions of sex, drugs, and violence, others are sure to appreciate Spiegelman's humane portrait of this dark life. Brendan Dowling
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: Villard; 1 edition (June 3, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400060567
ISBN-13: 978-1400060566
Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 11 ounces

Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,957,687 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
I was getting somewhere with the drinking when the superpowers started kicking in. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
fucking head

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
George Tatsis, Bell Boulevard, Carrie Fine, City Hall, Frankie Venages, Jeanie Riley, Quick Draw

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Citations (learn more)

1 book cites this book:

Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors and Literary Agents 2004: Who They Are! What They Want! and How to Win Them Over! (Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents) by Jeff Herman on page 643

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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

Average Customer Review

3.9 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Novel that is a Must Read, May 23, 2004

By	baird jones (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews

I consider Everyone's Burning by Ian Spiegelman (Villard Books) the best novel that I have read in the last twenty years, since I read Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Faulkner's Sanctuary. The author has written a brilliant book which can be read on many different levels. On one hand it is fiction about growing up in a tough Queens neighborhood, gangs, people going to prison, weird sex, drugs, friendship and betrayal and just at this level, Everyone's Burning is an exceptional read, mesmerizing and completely unforgettable. Spiegelman builds his characters in such a way that you really care about them, they become so vivid that is a moment of despair when you reach the final page and realize that you aren't going to be able to live inside their skins any more. But there is so much more to Everyone's Burning. Spiegelman is a genius. This man can really write. The text is alive, the words just jump off the page and crunch you. This author will be heard from again, many times again. His style is brief and dead on target. Even though he is writing about a very tough scene, the literary style here is so superb and the word choice is so skilled Spiegelman could be just as well be writing poetry. This is writing craft at its most perfect. For instance, there is a key scene where the main character accuses a cop whom he feels has not tried hard enough in tracking down the guy who sexually molested him as a kid. Spiegelman focuses on the shifting physical distance between the main character and the cop as the main character describes the scene. It is one of the most effective brief descriptions of two sort-of-strangers confronting each other intensely that I have ever read, and the author pulled it off by focusing on that changing distance between them, because in that kind of defensive overwhelming situation people will get caught up with displacement and remember small details like physical distance. I finished reading that passage thinking, "Can literature possibly be better than this?" But it was like that virtually on every page with Everyone's Burning. Another small stylistic example: the author ended his brief chapters at exactly the right moment. Some of the chapters were just a few pages and their length was always unpredictable, giving the book a pacing element that Spiegelman used like a master. The author's use of rhythm in his text, his feel for language was remarkable. The author always kept me a little off balance but the joy of reading such powerful prose and ruthlessly effective character development just made me desperate for more when I got to the last page. I cannot recommend a book more highly than this one.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take off your clothes, July 16, 2003

By	Carrie Friedenberg (NY United States) - See all my reviews

Spiegelman brilliantly exposes the proverbial elephant on the coffee table of middle class America. Completely exposed, this writer's first novel is daring, disturbing and never slow. Once in awhile you need to take off your clothes and look at your self in the mirror.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Your Mother's Cup of Tea, July 30, 2003

By	Jamie Jahncke "jamjahncke" (New Orleans, LA) - See all my reviews

I heard about this book when Ian Spiegelman was on Howard Stern. So I bought it and read it in one day. Well-written, psychologically meaty, and the ending will tear out your heart. Hands down, best last line ever.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars It was all a daze...
After seeing an ad for the book online, I decided to give this young contemporary author a do-or-die shot. Read more

Published on October 17, 2003 by Chirag Mehta

1.0 out of 5 stars my eyes are burning
I wanted to love this book. However, it was painfully boring to read and I found myself hating the characters. Read more

Published on August 6, 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book
Perfectly captures the alienation and hopelessness felt by those who, as children, are failed by the adults around them. Read more

Published on July 29, 2003 by Emma

4.0 out of 5 stars red-hot and real
OK, I'll admit that it was the cover that caught my eye, but when I picked the book up and read the first paragraph, I laughed and knew it was for me. Read more

Published on July 18, 2003 by KSeashore

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank You Ian Spiegelman!
As a Queens native, who grew up just a few miles from Bayside, I can sum up Spiegelman's novel in one word: accurate. Read more

Published on July 16, 2003 by Lee

5.0 out of 5 stars Raw and True
I initially bought "Everyone's Burning" based upon my love of all things Queens and was very pleasantly surprised. Read more

Published on July 16, 2003 by Justina Kiehart

5.0 out of 5 stars a great read
Personally, I find it hard to believe that anyone found this novel dull, and I loved the novel as a whole after having read only an excerpt on nerve. Read more

Published on July 15, 2003 by Alice

1.0 out of 5 stars Everyone's Boring
Spiegelman displays no understanding of scene, character, tone, plot, or structure. Instead, the novel skips from one unrelated episode to another, never bothering to develop its... Read more

Published on July 10, 2003

1.0 out of 5 stars Rather flat & dull
For a book that is to be about sex & drugs, it's not particularly sexy or wild. If there's anything more dull than boring people talking about their pathethic lives & sex & drugs,... Read more

Published on June 23, 2003

4.0 out of 5 stars This is a good read
A realistic portrail of middle class Queens youth, this book hits the nail on the head. Speigelman did a great job for his first book. Worth the read!

Published on June 22, 2003

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