AMERICAN SPIRITS, sapphic suds with a side of sly social commentary

AMERICAN SPIRITS
ANNA DORN
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A love letter to pop music, American Spirits charts an icon’s fall—and an obsessive fangirl’s rise.

Thirty-eight-year-old Blue Velour has finally achieved the critical acclaim she’s long been chasing. Over the last decade, she’s released six studio albums to mixed reviews, landing her somewhere between performance artist and niche legend. But her latest album, Blue’s Beard—a cheeky reference to the subreddit fanatically dedicated to her suspected secret relationship with longtime producer Sasha Harlow—has rocket-launched her reputation. Blue hires nerdy superfan Rose Lutz as her assistant to handle the pressures of the upcoming tour.

When the pandemic shuts down the tour, however, Blue decides to hole up in the redwoods with Sasha to make another album. An aspiring singer herself, Rose is frothing at the mouth to be isolated in a cabin with these two legends, but what begins as a creative retreat spirals into a flurry of chaos and betrayal—culminating in a tragic act that changes their lives forever.

Smart, entertaining, and edgy, American Spirits is a compelling exploration of the dark side of fame.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A Star is Born with Lana del Rey as Norman Maine. Let that sink in.

So I was pretty invested early on, I like the idea of a lesbian A Star is Born more than you can probably imagine, and from Author Dorn's very, very capable pen...! Home run ball, meet bat, amirite? Well, I was right. Just...not all the way to the fences for that ball.

I don't see much point in going over the plot, it's accurately summarized in the publisher's synopsis. The flavor of the book is more what I rate this author's work on. I enjoy the line-by-line reading of Author Dorn's work so much, f/ex Blue Velour's description of Ayn Rand as "the original girl boss", that I was carried along on a satisfied cloud of smiles as I absorbed her digs and jabs at the culture of Fame, its corrosive loss of perspective for the famous and the fans, the careful but there delineation of the societal systems that Fame depends on and reinforces as toxic and harmful. I was set to give this story a rave review.

Then came The Twist℠.

The observant among you will note the rating above. That is how much I disliked, and always dislike, this framing device as revealed near the end of the book. No I will not discuss details, no one dares do such a thing while the Spoiler Stasi lurk among us. It is a framing device that is completely ordinary, does not cause others the anger it evokes from me, and will bother very few, if any, of y'all. It's my quirk. I write reviews of books because sometimes someone discovers a new writer when I gush (or excoriate, I know of one case where someone read my line "...I, a charter member of the “Eradicate Ivy Compton-Burnett” Society" in a two-star review and found her newest reading passion), and to help people on the bubble about picking up a new book to gather information about it, and to vent my feelings about writers and writing. I've written a lot of reviews...there are over 2,000 posts on this blog alone...so the reader can get a bead on my personal taste. It's good to know your source's biases. So if you feel I'm being unfair to Author Dorn by not rating this particular book in line with the majority of the story's genuine excellence, understand that my opinion of her writing talent and expertise is as strong as ever...I simply do not like at all the particular twist she, in her authorial capacity, chose to use in this story.

It's not meant to discourage potential readers seeking sapphic melodrama, fame-culture takedowns, or the sheer pleasure of reading her prose, from getting the book. If you've been thinking about Perfume & Pain and wondering when the next dose is going to soothe your craving, don't drop it...just maybe borrow this one from the library first. You might adore what bothers me, and want a copy to keep on your shelves.

I can very much see this reaction. In fact, I hope you feel that way because I want Author Dorn's next book as soon as Simon & Schuster can get it out.

PERFUME & PAIN, raucous raunchy ribald reading...go get one NOW!

PERFUME & PAIN
ANNA DORN
Simon & Schuster
$18.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A controversial Los Angeles author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction.

Having recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer’s group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions—like Ivy, a grad student who smells like metallic orchids and is researching 1950s lesbian pulp, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli.

Penelope, a painter living off Urban Outfitters settlement money, immediately ingratiates herself in Astrid’s life, bonding with her best friends and family, just as Astrid and Ivy begin to date in person. Astrid feels judged and threatened by Penelope, a responsible older vegan, but also finds her irresistibly sexy.

When Astrid receives an unexpected call from her agent with the news that actress and influencer Kat Gold wants to adapt her previous novel for TV, Astrid finally has a chance to resurrect her waning career. But the pressure causes Astrid’s worst vice to rear its head—the Patricia Highsmith, a blend of Adderall, alcohol, and cigarettes—and results in blackouts and a disturbing series of events.

Unapologetically feminine yet ribald, steamy yet hilarious, Anna Dorn has crafted an exquisite homage to the lesbian pulp of yore, reclaiming it for our internet- and celebrity-obsessed world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Have you read Highsmith's Carol (aka The Price of Salt)? This has that particular kind of Questa o Quella? Rigoletto-but-sapphic-romance aura. And, follow-up concept, are you aware that Highsmith was a cruel, nasty piece of work? This has that same mean-creative story aura.

Having now hooked a few, driven a few off, and confused most, let's talk about lesbians. I'm the gay brother of a spiky, difficult lesbian. (She said so before I did! But, to be scrupulously fair, our entire family is/was spiky and difficult.) Astrid's 'tude is nowhere near as unkind as the reviews led me to believe it would be, by my own family's standards. What she is, that seems to surprise and unnerve the people around her in the story, is what I think interesting people usually are: Opinionated. I note without pleasure that opinionated women get miles of stick from persons of all genders and orientations. Just ask Hillary Clinton if you doubt me. It shows also in the readers' reviews I've seen around and about. Lots of people, even the ones who liked the story fine, commented on how abrasive Astrid was. Well, yeah. She's smarter than a solid 95% of the people around her. She's in a highly stressed passage in her life. She's abrasive because she's rubbed raw by her life.

Her happy place is perfume. Think about what that means. She collects something that is designed to hide and to enhance a person's most intimate quality, their smell. She doesn't even collect the stuff itself! She collects the containers...the carefully designed vessels that seduce the eyes but in and of themselves provide nothing but a space to be filled! The capitalist/consumer seductions carefully designed to increase your (largely female, as these are perfume bottles) cultural anxiety about your fundamental attractor or repeller of intimacy, smell!

This Anna Dorn, she knows her onions. Show me, please, another author whose depth of character development includes these intense sociopolitical shades whose prose isn't clunking, juddering, jelly-like didacticism. Author Dorn's got little enough competition in the witty-banter segment. She's sui generis in the segment of the Venn diagram where that overlaps anti-capitalist/feminist discourse.

Happily so. I'm glad Simon & Schuster offered me this DRC because, old gay man that I am, I hadn't heard of Author Dorn before. Now it's me for Vagablonde.

I see a few raised eyebrows contemplating an expected fifth star, after that gush. I wanted to put a fifth star on, I promise! I couldn't because Astrid being wishy-washy about Ivy-vs-Penelope was overplayed. I think will-they-won't-they is an easy trope to allow to outstay its actual usefulness. My perception is that this is what happened here. I'm also a wee bit wary of things like cancel culture/getting canceled being enshrined in stories that say bigger, more trenchant things about inclusion and cultural norms. It feels more like an add-on to use Astrid's canceling for her unguarded comments than an actual feature of the entire conversation the rest of the story is having about the greater issues abovementioned.

So okay, I didn't find myself sitting slackjawed, wondering how this author faceted this sparkling thousand-carat diamond. (That experience is what I call six-stars-of-five storytelling.) But make no mistake, this wordsmith will be on my readar as I wait for her to do just that.

It seems very likely to happen.