Shining City

by Seth Greenland

Book Overview

A witty and sexy satire about how contemporary American culture defines right and wrong, good and bad, from the acclaimed author of The Bones . When good guy Marcus Ripps takes over his black sheep... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1596915048
• ISBN13: 9781596915046
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.9" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The funniest book of the year --- you will howl

I have, at long last, read a new novel I wish I'd written. I knew from the very first two sentences: Julian Ripps was too fat to be reclining in a hot tub between a pair of naked women, unless he was very rich or they were prostitutes. He wasn't, but they were. But all is not well in the hot tub next to the infinity pool on the flagstone deck high above Los Angeles. The hookers depart, leaving Julian to deal with the aftermath of a two cheeseburger dinner and the possibility --- no, the likelihood --- of a criminal indictment for money laundering. The myocardial infarction hits him in the tub, and, four pages into Shining City, he's dead. We next find ourselves in the ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hotel, site of a Bar Mitzvah. As you might expect, there are chocolate fountains and a Vanity Fair photographer and guests who behave "as if they were at a fund-raiser that just happened to feature klezmer music during the cocktail hour." The father had his corporate communications guys write his speech, the kids get henna tattoos, and the music starts with the voice of a rapper "whose shrewdest career move involved getting shot." But it's the "motivational dancer" on each arm of the Bar Mitzvah boy that signals we are in the hands of a comic master. And in case we're slow on the uptake, consider the chapter's end, as everyone dances --- "in a celebratory mosh". It gets better. Among the guests at the Bar Mitzvah are Marcus Ripps, brother of the dead pimp, and his wife Jan. They live in Van Nuys. He's had a dull managerial job at a novelty toy factory for fifteen years. She owns Ripcord, a moribund boutique. Their son's on scholarship at an exclusive private school where "a sixth-grader was selling his Ritalin to a high school sophomore." They're being crushed by an $80,000 home equity loan. They haven't made love for a month, and when Marcus, in frustration, tries to part Jan's thighs, it's "like trying to crack a safe that had no combination." Very quickly --- Greenland is not one for pretty flights of prose that an editor dare not remove --- the factory closes. ("To everything there is a season: a time to expand, a time to downsize, a time to move the entire operation to the Far East.") But when a door closes, another opens, this time to Shining City, a dry cleaner on Melrose --- Julian has bequeathed it to the unsuspecting Marcus. (They had not been close: "Marcus remembered Julian as someone who took the noble out of savage.") Marcus visits the establishment. A woman walks in and gives him an envelope filled with cash. Slowly, he realizes. The lawyer hadn't told him Julian was a "pip" --- he'd said "pimp". And now Marcus can be that guy. It was "a disorienting sensation, as if he'd been exploring a Pacific atoll and had come upon a production of Porgy and Bess being performed by a cast of house cats." I don't want to spoil the fun for you, so let me just point out that --- unless you are a devout believer in almost any religion --- you

Read this book!

Were it not for Mr. Nemeth's scintillating review (and for having paid for the book), this reader would not have continued beyond Shining City's introductory quirky, abrasive chapters. But then. But then. The story line grips, up to and including its Sturm und Drang apogee. And then the finish. Ahhh!

"The Way We Live Now"

Most reviewers have justly praised the verbal wit and irony which propel this work forward at breakneck speed. Greenland, whose past credits include screen and playwriting, here produces some of the funniest, allusively rich lines since the heyday of Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Gimlet- eyed but high-spirited, he describes a woman who's let her eating habits get the better of her as a "Cezanne pear." In the same vein, he draws contemporary bar mitzvahs as overly lavish, present-producing, wholly secular events. When he presents "the out-of-towner Sunday brunch ...[as] a bar mitzvah tradition that, while appearing nowhere in the Torah, had become very popular in southern California," it's awfully difficult not to roar with laughter from shocks of recognition. What has not been sufficiently praised in this memorable comic novel, though, is the seriousness of its subtext, one which concerns the losses of civilized traditions and their attendant ethical systems. Greenland's southern California has become a place where the only thing diverse individuals or their families any longer have in common is a lust for money-making. If a reader accepts the traditional judgment that comedy is a far sadder art than tragedy, since the latter genre is inclined to reveal sparks of nobility in the most unlikely persons, whereas comedy usually features reprobates who rarely change (think Malvolio or Shylock), author Greenland in his drawing of one Marcus Ripps, a guy going from bad choice to worse, has created a memorable, contemporary addition to the classic comic pantheon. The title of the book wittily alludes to the initial Puritan dream, the creation in America of a shining city atop a hill. In the novel, however, we're in contemporary southern California where through comic reduction to absurdity Shining City has become the name of an ersatz dry cleaning establishment, touting the cleanliness next to godliness at its front door, but being in fact in its inner recesses a brothel. The satiric theme of the novel is that for the main characters money isn't everything; only a lot of money is! For such characters, all entrepreneurs of a sort, and representative inhabitants of both California and modern America, making a living and providing for one's family by just about any means are the highest realities. "The business of America is business," we were told long ago, but Greenland raises the question of whether business practices have ever been or currently are necessarily exalted activities. In a contemporary application, he details how common integrity in daily life has become for his central characters a prohibitive luxery. Their lives are wholly given over to aggrandizement for themselves and their immediate families. Such is the narrow extent of their societal concerns, as even contributions to charity become a means of self-promotion and showing off. Though wars and other disasters are repeatedly featured on the TV screens mentioned in the novel, such events fail

Everything Shiny & Bright

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: [...]

Shining City

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