Wasted Beauty: A Novel

By Eric Bogosian

Book Overview

With his dark wit and corrosive dialogue, Eric Bogosian tells a powerful and emotionally wrenching tale of two lovers who form a mesmerizing and destructive bond while trying to evade the looming failure of their respective lives.
Reba runs away from her shabby and desolate rural community for the lure of New York City. Her tall and awkward frame lands her work modeling, but she is not prepared for the glamorous, drug-fueled life of a celebrated mannequin. After a series of painful relationships, she sees hope and an exit toward stability and sanity in the man who saves her brother's life.
This man is Rick, a successful SoHo general practitioner with a warm family and an idyllic life that has left him restless and hollow. He doesn't take Reba seriously until he finds himself so enmeshed in her beauty that he risks losing everything--his home, his children and his beloved wife.
Now this master monologist and author of the acclaimed Mall returns with a sprawling novel of urban desperation and desire that brings to mind the winding narratives of Tom Wolfe salted with the dark urges of Philip Roth. The New York Times hailed Eric Bogosian's fiction as caustic, fast-paced....Adapting himself to fiction with...the same garrulous intensity he brings to plays and monologues, Mr. Bogosian sets in motion a suburban nightmare. And Entertainment Weekly has lauded his merciless satirical vision (that) takes you deep into the dark heart of the American dream.
Wasted Beauty is Bogosian's enthralling journey through the high life of drugs and fashion celebrity, middle-class guilt and sexual obsession.
Copyright (c) 2005 by Simon & Schuster

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743235886
• ISBN13: 9780743235884
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Couldn't put down

This was the first novel I have read by Eric Bogosian (I'm currently reading Mall), and I am hooked. His beautiful writing as the three main characters (Billy, Rick and Reba) and the ability to switch between all three to first person will keep you reading. As the reader, you develop sincere feeling for these characters, even though on the outside they look like a raging alcoholic, a drug addicted model and a cheating husband. Bogosian dives deeper into each of their brains, making it a must read!

Buy This Book

If I were to compare Bogosian's first novel, Mall: A Novel, to his play subUrbia then I would also make a comparison between 'Wasted Beauty' and his recent play 'Red Angel'. The Jeff of both Mall and subUrbia were two closely related characters, much like the leading men in Wasted Beauty and Red Angel. In print, however, Bogosian is able to delve deeper into the characters' inner thoughts. When reading his work, one can just tell that Bogosian is an actor -- he often follows dialogue directly with subtext, which I liked. Rick, the main character in 'Beauty', actually has roots that go much further back in Bogosian's work than 'Angel'. He is reminiscent of the peeping-tom in Mall, who was a descendent of Bogosian's recovering-male-character from his solos. If you've been following his work, I would say you will definitely appreciate this book, and if you haven't, now's a good time to start.