WHORES FOR GLORIA
Jan 2013 · Pantheon
4.3star
3 reviewsreport
eBook
144
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn more
About this eBook
With his first three works of fiction—the novels You Bright and Risen Angels and The Ice-Shirt, and the collection The Rainbow Stories—William T. Vollmann announced himself as a writer of rare and ferocious talent, with critics comparing him to William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, and T.C. Boyle.
His new novel is the story of Jimmy, who has been deserted by his lover, a prostitute by the name of Gloria. In the despair of his loneliness, and his drunken grief, he reassembles Gloria’s presence out of whatever he can buy from the hookers on the street—the fragments of their lives and dreams, and locks of hair they are willing to share for a price. In his search for these snatches of intimacy he meets the hustlers, drunks, and prostitutes of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district: Candy, who beats her customers when they ask for it but refuses to let them call her a bitch; Snake, who pimps his wife; Nicole, whose job it is to give men AIDS; Jack, who shoots his woman’s earnings into his arm but still likes Chopin even though he doesn’t have a record player; and Gloria, who may or may not be a figment of Jimmy’s imagination.
Vollmann writes with explosive power of the inner city, unflinching in the way he confronts the solitude of the homeless and unloved, the insulted and the injured of skid-row America. His exhilarating, high-voltage style and lyric language touch the heart and retrieve a jubilant integrity from the harsh struggles of his characters. Here is a world of harrowing truth, beautifully expressed by a writer of prodigious gifts.
His new novel is the story of Jimmy, who has been deserted by his lover, a prostitute by the name of Gloria. In the despair of his loneliness, and his drunken grief, he reassembles Gloria’s presence out of whatever he can buy from the hookers on the street—the fragments of their lives and dreams, and locks of hair they are willing to share for a price. In his search for these snatches of intimacy he meets the hustlers, drunks, and prostitutes of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district: Candy, who beats her customers when they ask for it but refuses to let them call her a bitch; Snake, who pimps his wife; Nicole, whose job it is to give men AIDS; Jack, who shoots his woman’s earnings into his arm but still likes Chopin even though he doesn’t have a record player; and Gloria, who may or may not be a figment of Jimmy’s imagination.
Vollmann writes with explosive power of the inner city, unflinching in the way he confronts the solitude of the homeless and unloved, the insulted and the injured of skid-row America. His exhilarating, high-voltage style and lyric language touch the heart and retrieve a jubilant integrity from the harsh struggles of his characters. Here is a world of harrowing truth, beautifully expressed by a writer of prodigious gifts.
Ratings and reviews
4.3
3 reviews
Jeremy Phillips
- Flag inappropriate
17 September 2015
Parts of this book are so well written its inspiring and other parts are hard to read. Interesting nonetheless.
About the author
William T. Vollmann has won the Whiting Foundation Award and the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Award for his fiction.
Rate this eBook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Centre instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
