Vanity Fair called this intensely erotic story of a young woman's sexual and psychological odyssey "a provocative tour through the dark side."
"Erotic . . . beautifully crafted prose."―Time
“Hallucinatory, dystopian . . . a disturbing, poisonous fable of the dire consequences of derailed passion."―New York Times
“The diary of a death wish . . . Suicide Blonde doles out some bitter, valuable lessons."―New Yorker
"Steinke has a diabolical grasp of the willfulness of decadence, the ambiguity of sexuality, and the transmutability of identity. . . . [Suicide Blonde is an] electrifying tale with the ambience of a Warhol or John Waters film. Edgy and powerful stuff."―Booklist
"Suicide Blonde is in the tradition of Djuna Barnes, Georges Bataille, and Marguerite Duras. It’s about . . . the part of town where you’re not supposed to go, beauty where there shouldn’t be any.”―Robert Olmstead
Jesse, a beautiful twenty-nine-year-old, is adrift in San Francisco's demimonde of sexually ambiguous, bourbon-drinking, drug-taking outsiders. While desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend in a world of confused and forbidden desire, she becomes the caretaker of and confidante to Madame Pig, a besotted, grotesque recluse. Jesse also falls into a dangerous relationship with Madison, Pig's daughter or lover or both, who uses others' desires for her own purposes, hurtling herself and Jesse beyond all boundaries.
With Suicide Blonde, Darcey Steinke delves into themes of identity and time, as well as the common - and now tainted - language of sexuality.
