Rescue Me

Rating:
Summary: It's a hard life to be a free woman
Review: This novel is a little gem in its genre, a love story. But the author goes beyond and introduces us with a far more complex picture of L.A. society. The main character, Amanda, has to navigate among many perils and hazards. Her brother, a drugpusher, his girlfriend, a drugaddict, their son, a miracle in such conditions, her lifelong friend and lover who becomes her husband through blackmail, her boss and associates who take advantage of her with no future, and her real love Gabriel, a black factory worker who is a hundred time better than all the others. She will be forced into a marriage she does not want, and she will find Gabriel again on the very day when her husband announces he wants a divorce. The book also shows how some people, here men, from the lower classes of American society are able to make it and become successful entrepreneurs of a type or another : the land of opportunities is still here. But these men are motivated in their social climbing by women, the women they want to possess or the women they love. And yet the book goes even further by showing in great details the fate and lot of women in this American society. All women are exploited by men as sex toys, all women are exploited by men as social status tools, and yet again women resist this status of being nothing but a possession. There apparently are many ways, some closer to prostitution than human dignity, some harder than the hardest ordeal one can imagine, some rather easy and yet leading to a life of solitude and depressive alienation. Of course the end is luminous, it is a happy ending. But the book is rich in numerous pages and reflexions on the position of women in American society. It is serious and it should be read by many, men and women alike, to ponder on what they do and what they want and what they impose to others.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

Rating:
Summary: It did rescue me!
Review: What happened to Joe? That's all I want to know. A sub-character with very very very little to add in the big scheme of things has got me perplexed. Did he die of AIDS? Did he slip in a pool and drown. I just didn't get it.

With that aside. Rescue Me was an intense ride in romance and the heedy side of drugs, premarital sex, and kids(pretending to be adults) acting like piranha while their mom is away living la vida loca with the car salesman. And then there's Gabriel, the black angel, who waits ten years for Amanda who dumps him like a rotten sack of potatoes for James(Jimmy)who can give her everything she's always dreamed of, a life outside of her run down drug shack. When Amanda realizes that her big house and soccer mom status isn't enough she searches for Gabriel to come back into her life. The ending was definitely straight out of Hollywierd but it wouldn't stop me from reading another one of Grazer's short brisk tales.

Rating:
Summary: Fast, Spirited and Witty
Review: What happened to Joe? That's all I want to know. A sub-character with very very very little to add in the big scheme of things has got me perplexed. Did he die of AIDS? Did he slip in a pool and drown. I just didn't get it.

With that aside. Rescue Me was an intense ride in romance and the heedy side of drugs, premarital sex, and kids(pretending to be adults) acting like piranha while their mom is away living la vida loca with the car salesman. And then there's Gabriel, the black angel, who waits ten years for Amanda who dumps him like a rotten sack of potatoes for James(Jimmy)who can give her everything she's always dreamed of, a life outside of her run down drug shack. When Amanda realizes that her big house and soccer mom status isn't enough she searches for Gabriel to come back into her life. The ending was definitely straight out of Hollywierd but it wouldn't stop me from reading another one of Grazer's short brisk tales.