Fearful Symmetry

Rating:
Summary: two-and-a-half stars, actually.
Review: Not since Disneyland opened has anything made Orange County so compelling--and it's about time. This most unreal of California milieus merits more than the cynical dismissals of the hip and _FS_ serves up erotic dissonance in heaping spoonfulls of dread and psychosis Orange County style. The story itself you've probably read countless times before--it felt like it to me anyhow--memories of Tartt's _The Secret History_, Fowles' _The Magus_ as well bits of Carver and Gifford came immediately to mind. The speaker is drawn into a web of intrigue and quickly finds himself in over his head. Yadda, yadda. None of the characters have much to recommend themselves, but the novel holds together remarkably well and suffices nicely as a guilty pleasure. The author name-drops endlessly and the cultural references eventually grow tedious without really telling the story; an unfortunate artifact of a the author's art school pedigree?

Rating:
Summary: candy for the mouth and ears. exquisite passivity.
Review: Okay-so the cheezy jacket copy lured me in. But once I read the book, I was struck both by the beauty of its prose and the emotional complexity of its characters, not to mention its plot. Bills's main character, Peter Keith, is one of the best depictions of pathological passivity I have read--and unlike other authors who explore this theme (Dennis Cooper, Mary Gaitskill), Peter is likeable and sweet, if at time incredibly irritating. The couple he gets involved with--Muried and Chaz Lambent--brought a woodie to this bisexual reviewer's hog. In all seriousness, I enjoyed this book very much. As a stylist, Bills is non-pareil. I was also rather interested in his portrait of Orange County, particularly the horrid town of Irvine, which is almost a fourth main character in the book. And did I mention that a kitten is integral to the plot? But perhaps best of all, it's ultimately not one of those tedious postmodern pseudo-erotic excursions into text; this is actually a novel, with all the virtues implied in the term. Read it now

Rating:
Summary: Boy meets Couple
Review: Semi-gay Peter Keith moves next door to a couple straight out of Kinkyville. Chaz and Muriel are the ideal couple, if by ideal you mean wearing masks, playing games fit for deSade, sharing a young neighboy boy and living the good life.

Keith falls for both of them and makes love to each of them, singularly and together. The games begin casually, a greeting or an invitation to drop over, a telephone call, a furtive vision of kinky domestic life. They pick up steam as the neighbor is caught in the increasingly reckless and wild activites that now include bondage, violence, masks, knives, sex (with both) and that always open invitation to do more.

This is about a lot of very amoral people who wouldn't know right from wrong if it was wrapped up like a present. What was supposed to be a coming of age tale became a kinky, heated, revelatory expose of strange suburban happenings. The ending, though shocking, is almost a denoument.