Rating: 
Summary: Great Read
Review: I can see why this book is the recpient of the Ludlow Press Breakout Fiction Award. It's a distinctive novel that deals with the absurdity of loneliness.The prortagonist, Martin Sierra, is in search of love, and of course, as luck would have it, the woman he is interested in is bisexual. Martin turns to single ads, and his life begins to change, so much so, that he starts showing up late to work. The women he begins to meet are peculiar, to say the least. I don't want to give too much away, but I highly recommend it. It's a fun read.
Rating:
Summary: One Very Funny Book!
Review: I purchased an inexpensive "used" copy of The Losers Club from Amazon, not knowing what to expect. Wow! This novel is great! The writing is like a cross between David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson -- all rolled into one. This is a well-told, highly entertaining and very funny book! Much funnier than I thought it would be. I'm shocked that I never heard of the author -- or the title, before stumbling onto the book accidently while browsing late at night. I recommend this book enthusiastically! The copy I bought, by the way, while being "used" was actually in great condition. It was just a great buy and a great book! Don't hesitate to check it out. I promise you'll be happy. A fast, hilarious read. The Losers Club is like no other novel you've ever read!
Rating:
Summary: Check out ----> The Losers Club: Complete Restored Edition!
Review: I was granted access to the newly printed The Losers Club: Complete Restored Edition! -- and I must say (without having read the earlier 2003 version) -- that I was bowled over. The new (or "restored") version for 2005 contains 100 more pages of story, 30 new and restored chapters, author interview, book group questions and a special glossary. The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition easily ranks (in my humble opinion) with the likes of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and High Fidelity. Yeah, there's a touch of David Sedaris, too. The Restored Edition is absolutely hilarious! If you can get your hands on it, even an early review copy -- don't hesitate! It's also a tremendous love story, very soulful. By the end, when everything seems lost, I was choked with tears, no fooling: I really related to the protagonist of this novel. It really struck an emotional chord with me. Anyway, check it out: The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition! Like Catcher in the Rye, this is one book you'll never forget. It will haunt you, I promise!
Rating:
Summary: Check out ----> The Losers Club: Complete Restored Edition!,
Review: I was granted access to the newly printed The Losers Club: Complete Restored Edition! -- and I must say (without having read the earlier 2003 version) -- that I was bowled over. The new (or "restored") version for 2005 contains 100 more pages of story, 30 new and restored chapters, author interview, book group questions and a special glossary. The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition easily ranks (in my humble opinion) with the likes of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and High Fidelity. Yeah, there's a touch of David Sedaris, too. The Restored Edition is absolutely hilarious! If you can get your hands on it, even an early review copy -- don't hesitate! It's also a tremendous love story, very soulful. By the end, when everything seems lost, I was choked with tears, no fooling: I really related to the protagonist of this novel. It really struck an emotional chord with me. Anyway, check it out: The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition! Like Catcher in the Rye, this is one book you'll never forget. It will haunt you, I promise!
Rating: 
Summary: Not all it's cracked up to be.
Review: In a word;overrated. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad book, but it's certainly not worthy of all 5 stars. It has it's moments as far as humor, and the writting is pretty good at times as well, but for someone who reads all the time this has the look of a novice writer.
Rating:
Summary: Shimmers with reality. Book Sense 76 Top Ten Pick Fall '03
Review: In Richard Perez's first novel, we are introduced to a look back at the weirdly shapened, solipsistic mid-90's. In The Loser's Club, Perez creates a world spinning perfectly toward an anonymous absolute, fraught with only the slightest hope of love with the unattainable Nikki. Martin Sierra is a writer down on his luck, lost in a sea of rejection and the mundane, mind-numbing tasks of a day job. Hopeful, Martin turns to the personal ads, an addiction that keeps him stoked as he runs from one run-down club to the next, trying to find something, anything, that resembles stimulation. Perez is a master of dialogue, creating conversations so vividly, with the succinctness of a playwright, that the reader becomes privy to the inner lives of Perez's characters. With blurbs from famous writers such as Mary Gaitskill, John Dufrense, and Richard Rhodes, it's no wonder this book won the Breakthrough Fiction Award. This is a wonderful book, full of shimmering prose, deftly rendered scenes and a whole fist-full of gritty anecdotes. This is a lush book, a treasure trove of the best that fiction has to offer.
Rating:
Summary: The first work by an authentic, fresh new voice
Review: In the span of a mere 200 pages Richard Perez introduces himself as an author who already has grabbed our attention and provides evidence that he is a fresh new voice in contemporary American literature with both feet in the door. Martin Sierra is a poet with a past who has taken residence in the East Village in New York City to explore his memories of family and to seek love and relationships in that most 1990's 'wrong place' - the Personal Ads in the local sleazy newspaper. That his efforts to find the right girl are thwarted comes as no surprise, but that is part of the message of this 'memoir-like' story: we live in a world populated by lonely 'losers' who grapple for love while trading it for instant gratification/drugs/nights-at-the-clubs/booze. In essence all of Perez' characters are losers, but what a bunch of interesting souls! The author has a keen ability to create atmosphere and photo-realistic people in the most economical of terms. No wasted words here: the pace of this novel maintians a level of interest that defies the reader to put it down before reaching the final page. Here is a young writer who incorporates poetry, grit, social problems, and travelogue into a story so full of characters that could be less than interesting and instead adds all these ingredients to create a main character wbout whom we care very much. Martin Sierra, for all his disappointments both to himself and those resulting from thwarted attempts to relate to the odd people he encounters, is someone difficult not to love. If Richard Perez can pack this much wallop into such a short novel as THE LOSERS' CLUB, then we can only imagine what this talent has in store for us in his next boook. Highly Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: This love story brings New York's East Village to life!
Review: Looking for love. That's the theme of Richard Perez's first novel, set in the East Village in the late 1990s. There's Martin Sierra, in his early twenties who works at a clerical job by day and lives in the borough of Queens, a short subway ride from Manhattan. He tries hard to meet girls. So hard in fact that he is a customer of a phone dating service, which he dials with an addictive fascination, hoping someone will leave a phone message in his mailbox. During the course of the novel, he does meet a few young women, and these dates are always set in the bars, coffee houses and clubs in the East Village. As I live in the area, I smiled at his descriptions. There are the tattoos, piercings and the shaved heads. There's cross-dressing and the gothic look. There's the sport of throwing yourself from the stage into a "mosh pit" where you might or might not be caught by the crowd. There are performances by bands that are purposely crafted to outrage. Martin however, manages to just be an observer. Although there are designer drugs around, he chooses alcohol. He doesn't dress up to be a star. He's really just a guy looking for someone to love. Eventually he finds it and this is the story of how that happens and the people he meets along the way. I enjoyed the book and identified with Martin's universal problems. I also liked being able to recognize some of the landmarks the writer describes. Many of them, such as the Waverly Theater, have been closed for while now. And the constant referrals to phone booths and pagers set this novel in a time before the advent of cell phones. It's just a few years ago but yet it seems to be set in a far distant time and place. However, the author manages to capture the essence of that fleeting world forever between the pages of the 174-page book. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Love in the 90s
Review: Ludlow Press's Breakthrough Fiction Winner is Richard Perez's "Losers' Club," a captivating little novel about love, writing, clubs, and New York in the mid-90s. Gritty and edgy, it's also darkly funny (even hilarious) and in a peculiar way, very sweet and romantic. Martin Sierra is a lonely aspiring writer in a dull, uninspiring job. He's searching for a woman he can talk to, a friend as well as a lover. And he has met that woman -- and she is Nikki, a bisexual gal struggling through the end of a dying lesbian relationship. They hang around the glittering clubs and bars of New York's nightlife, perfectly in sync, except for Nikki's lingering sense of guilt that she shouldn't be growing so close to Marty. Marty's addiction to the personal ads reaps a pair of promising responses: Lola, full of rage and anger, and with a disturbing personal life; and Amaris, a gothic "creature of the night" with morbid interests (she once let a vampire gal suck her bleeding finger), and who has flings with the students she teaches. Martin's professional and personal life takes several strange twists, leading him to where he should have gone all along. The New York of "Losers' Club" is a stained semiprecious stone. A superficial glittering mass of bars and clubs, full of people who expect no more from it. The inhabitants are all at least a little loserish, but intriguingly so (say what you will about Amaris, she ain't boring!). Transsexuals, goths and vampires, angry artists, frustrated writers, guys on eighteen-inch-glow-in-the-dark platform shoes, and some people who just like to hang out and watch Andy Warhol flicks. Despite the downbeat title, this is a genuinely funny, witty book (the most hilarious part is the collection of ad replies that poor Marty wades through -- some stupid, some discouraging, and some that are just creepy). Perez's writing and study of his characters is reminiscent of 80s writers like Jay McInerney (except sprinkled with some very nice poetry). But he's not so busy appealing to readers' sense of cool that he forgets to keep them emotionally involved. Flashbacks reveal Marty's past with his mentally-ill, abusive mother, whom he harbors a sort of sadness for. Little flashes of dialogue reveal a lot about the characters' souls, and what kind of people they are. (Like whether they believe in fate, or talk to tombstones) It's hard not to like Marty. He aspires for something like happiness, and seems unable to reach it. But he is the sort who'll find it eventually. Nikki is a good balance of the realistic and idealistic -- while Marty sees her as all but perfect, we see she has doubts and insecurities too. Lola and Amaris are, in a way, enigmas -- we only see hints of what they're really like, and we learn about them as Marty does. "The Losers' Club" leaves the reader with a sense of bittersweetness. An unusual and compelling little novel, an unconventional story about love. It will leave you with a smile -- not a grin, but a little smile.
Rating:
Summary: Love in the 90s
Review: Ludlow Press's Breakthrough Fiction Winner is Richard Perez's "Losers' Club," a captivating little novel about love, writing, clubs, and New York in the mid-90s. Gritty and edgy, it's also darkly funny (even hilarious) and in a peculiar way, very sweet and romantic. Martin Sierra is a lonely aspiring writer in a dull, uninspiring job. He's searching for a woman he can talk to, a friend as well as a lover. And he has met that woman -- and she is Nikki, a bisexual gal struggling through the end of a dying lesbian relationship. They hang around the glittering clubs and bars of New York's nightlife, perfectly in sync, except for Nikki's lingering sense of guilt that she shouldn't be growing so close to Marty. Marty's addiction to the personal ads reaps a pair of promising responses: Lola, full of rage and anger, and with a disturbing personal life; and Amaris, a gothic "creature of the night" with morbid interests (she once let a vampire gal suck her bleeding finger), and who has flings with the students she teaches. Martin's professional and personal life takes several strange twists, leading him to where he should have gone all along. The New York of "Losers' Club" is a stained semiprecious stone. A superficial glittering mass of bars and clubs, full of people who expect no more from it. The inhabitants are all at least a little loserish, but intriguingly so (say what you will about Amaris, she ain't boring!). Transsexuals, goths and vampires, angry artists, frustrated writers, guys on eighteen-inch-glow-in-the-dark platform shoes, and some people who just like to hang out and watch Andy Warhol flicks. Despite the downbeat title, this is a genuinely funny, witty book (the most hilarious part is the collection of ad replies that poor Marty wades through -- some stupid, some discouraging, and some that are just creepy). Perez's writing and study of his characters is reminiscent of 80s writers like Jay McInerney (except sprinkled with some very nice poetry). But he's not so busy appealing to readers' sense of cool that he forgets to keep them emotionally involved. Flashbacks reveal Marty's past with his mentally-ill, abusive mother, whom he harbors a sort of sadness for. Little flashes of dialogue reveal a lot about the characters' souls, and what kind of people they are. (Like whether they believe in fate, or talk to tombstones) It's hard not to like Marty. He aspires for something like happiness, and seems unable to reach it. But he is the sort who'll find it eventually. Nikki is a good balance of the realistic and idealistic -- while Marty sees her as all but perfect, we see she has doubts and insecurities too. Lola and Amaris are, in a way, enigmas -- we only see hints of what they're really like, and we learn about them as Marty does. "The Losers' Club" leaves the reader with a sense of bittersweetness. An unusual and compelling little novel, an unconventional story about love. It will leave you with a smile -- not a grin, but a little smile.
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