Jeremy Thrane
A Novel
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the highly acclaimed In the Drink, a smart and sexy exploration of New York and its customs through the eyes of a disillusioned, yet secretly hopeful, gay man.
Jeremy Thrane is a thirty-five-year-old writer in love with a married man. For years, Jeremy has posed as "archivist" to Ted Masterson, a Hollywood action star. Jeremy maintains Ted's New York brownstone and guards the secret that could destroy his career. But when Ted and his movie-star wife, Giselle, adopt a child and become America's most-photographed family, Jeremy finds himself without a job and, more importantly, bereft of the love of his life.
With the same wit and authenticity that have made her a critical and popular favorite, Kate Christensen chronicles Jeremy's search for a new start as he ventures to every corner of the New York landscape, from watering holes where gossip columnists await an "item" to dives where waiters and busboys are eager to please patrons–especially after their shifts are over. In his spare time, he struggles to finish a novel based on his father's peripatetic life as a fanatical Marxist and turns out sizzling pornography for a one-man enterprise run by an old high school acquaintance. His sister, an up-and-coming rock musician, and his thrice-married, former flower-child mother, who found her true calling as a poet late in life, provide the mixture of criticism and compassion Jeremy has known all his life and now, for the most unexpected reasons, finally learns to appreciate.
A fast-paced and funny social satire, Jeremy Thrane deftly captures the slippery chameleon quality of American identity, the power of youth and beauty, and the complexity of love.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Kate Christensen's Blue Plate Special.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two years after her well-received debut, Christensen (In the Drink) delivers a knockout sophomore effort, once again set against the backdrop of a glitteringly grungy downtown Manhattan. As the novel begins, 35-year-old pretty boy Jeremy Thrane lives in the top -floor apartment of a gorgeous Gramercy Park townhouse otherwise inhabited by Hollywood star Ted Masterson, Ted's even hotter actress wife and their adopted daughter. Jeremy, long Ted's secret lover, has been employed as the actor's "archivist" for years, but his free ride is about to come to an end. Unceremoniously dumped by the media-wary Ted, Jeremy must abandon his apartment and take a thanklessnine-to-five job; on the bright side, he is finally inspired to finish his decade-in-the-makingnovel, a revenge fantasy based on the life of his deadbeat Marxist father.Christensen corrals a flawed cast of characters with a sure and compassionatehand, among them Jeremy's mother, a successful poet; his sister, a junior rock star; his best friend, a chic artist addicted to heroin; and a physically repellent gay-porn editor who has been in love with Jeremy since high school. Chistensen's sumptuous prose is both wicked andwise, resulting in a smart, sassy urban tale. Her wit is as acerbic as ever, butthe laugh-out-loud humor of her first novel has been exchanged for something darker and moreprovocative. Young, hip readers will be pleased by this stylish endeavor andwill agree that Christensen is establishing herself as an edgy chronicler ofthe Naked City and its struggling inhabitants.
