A Thing (or Two) About Curtis and Camilla
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
From the moment her daschund humped his leg on a Soho street, aspiring rock star/subway performer Curtis Birnbaum knew he was a goner. He sensed Camilla was a woman who would equally inspire and terrify him. And, miraculously, his ploys for her affection work. With the addition of Camilla to his life, the only thing he lacks for complete happiness is that elusive record deal (and some health insurance). But then, ominously, Camilla begins to slip away.
In this daring East Village love story, Nick Fowler gives us a hero who is completely honest about his heartbreak. We root for Curtis as he bottoms out and blunders his way through a series of hilarious misadventures--from a nude modeling stint, to a regretable steam room incident at Crunch gym, to a destination he has only dreamed of: the top floor of Worldwide Plaza where the record moguls preside. Through it all, Curtis remains determined to win back Camilla. Delightfully quirky and unexpectedly poignant, A Thing (or Two) about Curtis and Camilla conjures a tale about the price of love that is as true as it is hysterical.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fowler takes a gooey, insipid look at the roller-coaster ride of young love in this cloying debut novel, which focuses incessantly on the brief but epic infatuation of an aspiring 30-something rock star with a gorgeous, exotic PR rep. The "boy meets girl" section begins when aging, wannabe rocker Curtis Birnbaum falls for Camilla Fell while on an outing in NYC's SoHo. Based on a few hip conversations sprinkled with the appropriate literary and musical references, Birnbaum quickly decides that Camilla is his soul mate, and things move along swimmingly during the courtship scenes. The "boy loses girl" material commences with an ill-fated weekend in Europe, when the hapless Curtis loses the keys to their lodgings. While Curtis and Camilla manage to make the best of things, the fighting begins shortly after they get home. Camilla quickly dumps her whiny, neurotic boyfriend, and Curtis goes through a predictably negative period of self-examination as Fowler engineers a ludicrous series of scenes in which Curtis gets kicked out of his health club and ends up seeing a clueless, self-important naturopath to have his manhood assessed. Fowler's prose ranges from amusingly slick (Camilla's legs are "creamy, unscarred and tan, like the skin on a new jar of Jiffy") to downright purple ("Dawn was rinsing Time against her window"), and the tone wavers uncertainly between earnestness and arch appraisal of the characters' follies. Fowler, a former musician who has a bit part in The Sopranos, gets credit for keeping the narrative moving, but not much else works in this half-baked debut.
