CHEMICAL PINK

Name: CHEMICAL PINK
Author: Katie Arnoldi
ISBN: 0-312-87450-2

by Katie Arnoldi ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The occasionally flabby prose and muscle-bound characterization undercut the impact of an exposé that’s equal parts a...

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A Los Angeles–set first novel about the obsessive cult of women’s bodybuilding.

When bodybuilding champion May leaves him, Charles Worthington, a wealthy southern California eccentric, patrols the Venice gyms for a new woman to sponsor. Charles is something new in fiction: a serial sculptor, owner, and destroyer of women’s bodies. Into his gym life, and into the laboratory of his sponsorship, comes Aurora Jeanine Johnson, a single mother from the Deep South, and between them there occurs something of the telegraphy of sculptor and stone. Soon Aurora isn’t just lifting and training as per Charles’s instructions, but she’s also eating, drinking, and injecting whatever she’s told to. Charles chisels Aurora from hard-body wannabe to comic book superhero to sex toy—the object of Charles’s fantasies. At first, that’s an easy enough price for Aurora to pay. She’s always aspired to a bodybuilding physique, and Charles’s subsidies enable her to bring her teenaged daughter Amy to L.A. as well. But, like her body, the price Aurora pays grows in increments. The demands of the gym floor, the regimen of the kitchen, and the humiliation of the bedroom take their toll. Under all the growth hormones, Aurora’s clitoris enlarges as her voice drops. Meanwhile, Charles’s attraction to manly women develops into a compulsion for Doughdee, a black dominatrix with shoulders linebacker wide, while a resentful and neglected Amy wobbles on trendy cowboy boots that her thickening frame can’t master. Arnoldi shows herself to be an impeccable, and sometimes lyrical, authority on the world she describes, providing litanies of the obsessions that gym rats develop—the work-out regimens, the growth drugs, the nauseating side-effects—all juxtaposed with fastidious descriptions of Charles’s sexual performances, where thrusts are counted like weightlifters’ reps.

The occasionally flabby prose and muscle-bound characterization undercut the impact of an exposé that’s equal parts a Pumping Iron-documentary and a Harold Robbins shock-me please.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-312-87450-2

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Forge

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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FAMILY TREE

by Susan Wiggs ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2016

A compelling exploration of self, family, love, and the power of new beginnings.

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After a year in a coma, Annie Rush wakes up to a world without her husband, the TV she developed, and a wealth of memories that put her life into context, but as her body and mind heal, she puts her faith in second chances.

As a successful cooking-show producer who’s married to the gorgeous star, Annie knows she’s lucky, so she overlooks the occasional arguments and her husband’s penchant for eclipsing her. She’s especially excited the day she finds out she’s pregnant and, ignoring her typical steadfast schedule, rushes to the set to tell him. And discovers him making love to his onscreen assistant. Stunned, Annie leaves, trying to figure out her next move, and is struck on the head by falling on-set machinery. She wakes a year later in her Vermont hometown, as weak as a kitten and suffering from amnesia. As the days pass, however, she finds clues and markers regarding her life, and many of her memories begin to fill in. She remembers Fletcher, the first boy she loved, and how their timing was always off. She wanted to leave her family’s maple farm behind and explore the world—especially once her cooking-themed film school project was discovered and she was enfolded into the LA world of a successful food show. Fletcher intended to follow her, until life created big roadblocks for their relationship that they could never manage to overcome. Now, however, Annie’s husband has divorced her while Fletcher has settled in Switchback, and just as things look like they may finally click for Fletcher and Annie, her pre-accident life comes calling again. Wiggs (Starlight on Willow Lake, 2015, etc.) examines one woman’s journey into losing everything and then winning it all back through rediscovering her passions and being true to herself, tackling a complicated dual storyline with her typical blend of authenticity and sensitivity.

A compelling exploration of self, family, love, and the power of new beginnings.

Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-06-242543-0

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SEASONS OF HER LIFE

by Fern Michaels ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1994

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A fat pancake of a novel, the author's second hardcover production tells the life story of one Ruby Blue—from an abused childhood and youth, to years as wife of a Marine, personal liberation, life in the world of industry, and her golden years in a rural retreat. Throughout the career of Ruby Blue, monster men abound. There's Papa George in their Pennsylvania home, a slasher, smacker, and wife beater, who requires that his daughters repay him, in bucks, for the cost of raising them. Then there's Ruby's husband, Andrew (met in those WW II glory days in D.C.), who is heavy on the verbal abuse and generally amoral. Ruby's lifelong friend Dixie is regularly slugged mercilessly by husband Hugo. Ruby's longtime true love, Calvin, is a gentle soul, but his wife, Eva, is as lethal as the men; fortunately for Calvin, she lacks the biceps. Ruby weathers life with Andrew at Marine bases and puts up with his callous treatment of their two children, but after Andrew admits to having gambled away their son's college money she finally decamps to New Jersey. Ruby soldiers on with Dixie, and their kitchen cookie business goes international in no time. As for the men, they'll get theirs: Papa George is Bobbittized with scalding grape jelly; the late Hugo's ashes get lost in traffic; and Ruby dumps Calvin. But Andrew sees the light. Glop. However, bear in mind the author's smashing success in paperback, including her Texas saga (5 million sold).