Suicide Blond’s first sentence “Was it the bourbon or the dye fumes that made the pink walls quiver like vaginal lips?” threw me off immediately. I like a little foreplay at least in the first paragraph, and the introductory sentence left me feeling like the victim of a literary drive by. This is not to say that I am prudish, especially in my reading, but this sentence was crafted just to shock the reader. It left a bad taste in my brain, but not as much as the main character. Jesse is self involved and shallow, as far as characters go. She blames those in her life for making her feel inadequate, but I believe she is projecting. Normally, this would not bother me, but we are supposed to identify with her and pity her, something I cannot bring myself to do. She moves from Bell to Pig to Madison, seeking someone who will ultimately take care of her and give her meaning. Jesse thinks she can punish Bell for not loving her enough by running off to live like a bad girl only to return and tell him all of the horrible things she is doing, further showing that it was not out of self discovery but to snub someone who already doesn’t care what she does. I found the rest of her characters fascinating and lifelike, albeit somewhat stereotypical. It is the protagonist that falls short and contributes to the novel’s wanting.It would be easier to enjoy this novel were it not for the dreamy way you meander through the pages. Reading it feels ephemeral; I found myself striving towards a plot that tried to evade me at every turn. The structure is labyrinthine, and I do not mean that to be complimentary. Occasionally there is a beautiful gem of a sentence that you go back over and digest before moving on to the next random plot contrivance. It is obvious that underneath the indifference that Steinke possesses talent, she is just doing too good of a job hiding it under a boring plot.Steinke wishes to take the reader to a place that she believes is dark and cutting edge. She wants you to see how troubled Jesse is and pity her in her own self involvement. I came away believing Jesse to be responsible for her own problems and experiencing a sense of lost time; I know I read it and I know time has passed, but there isn’t much to show or remember what happened between the covers. It was not that I found myself lost in the literary world but that I found myself in limbo just outside of it. I finished with indifference. Even Suicide Blond’s ending is anticlimactic and failed to draw me in enough to feel any kind of closure. Then again, it also failed to invest me in the story so I figure I didn’t lose out. It reads like a first novel for someone who shows great promise but just doesn’t know how to show it yet; the only problem with Suicide Blond is that Steinke has published before, which I find regretful.By far it is not the best novel I have ever read, but Suicide Blond is also not the worst (you should hear what I have to say about House of Sand and Fog). I doubt I’ll ever pick it up again to read in its entirety, but there are a few sentences there that I, even now, want to read over again. This gives me a glimmer of hope that Steinke may put something else out that is really worth reading one day and gets across the beauty of prose that ghosts throughout the novel. I wanted to like this book. I really did. I tried, and I failed.
Darcy Steinke, Suicide Blonde (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1992)`ware the media event-book, film, whatever it may be-that is presented as something "in the tradition of." Robert Olmstead says on the back cover of Steinke's second novel that it is in the tradition of Djuna Barnes, Georges Bataille, and Marguerite Duras; certainly the kind of recommendationt hat is going to get under the skin of any connoisseur of enlightened pornography. Unfortunately, "in the tradition of" does not mean "comparable to."Steinke gives us the life of Jesse, a woman who is, as she says, "attracted to people who make me feel inadequate." Her lover, Bell, is obsessed with a former schoolmate he hasn't seen in ten years. She realizes she's falling into the same routine to try and keep him interested that her mother used to do the same with her father, but is unable to break the cycle, just sit and watch it in a kind of disinterested existential horror. Such might be refreshing to someone who's never read a book of its ilk before, and to be fair, upon its publication ten years ago the dysfunctional-main-character novel had not become nearly as prevalent a theme as it is now. But it certainly doesn't rouse like Bataille or Duras does, and Steinke doesn't have the chops to pull off the world-weary existential crisis the way someone like Kathe Koja does. Even her sex scenes have the same detached feel. Duras used the mechanism, but created feeling in the reader underneath with pacing, sentence structure, and word choice, all things of which she was a master; none are in evidence here. Not worth the time. (zero)
What do You think about Suicide Blonde (2000)?
Steinke's writing reminds me of a more accessible Kathy Acker. It's like an Eyes Wide Shut-type surreal fantasy — overtly sexual, dark, obscure, largely pointless. If you don't like to read books that make you feel uncomfortable, you won't enjoy it. But I liked Suicide Blonde, and appreciated Steinke's commentary on human nature. Steinke writes beautiful, and occasionally I would find sentences or passages that I absolutely loved and wanted to read over and over. Interesting enough, I didn't particularly like the heroine, Jesse, but I rooted for her. Maybe it was just that she reminded me a bit of myself; through the novel, she tries to get to that pinnacle of "modern feminist woman" but gets lost by her own personal failures and apathy. The characters in Suicide Blonde are obnoxious, sadistic, bizarre, and hedonistic. In other words, they are like most people.My one major dislike was that the book largely seems to be trying to to somewhere, but never quite gets there. The book doesn't end abruptly, but I did get the feeling that the book wasn't over when it had ended. The book's very Nihilistic, there really is not much of a point to it. Overall, it's a fast read (it took me a day), and if you're paying attention, you can get a lot out of it.
—Malina
It might not be fair to only give this two stars, because the writing was pretty good and the main character did move me enough to feel heartbreak for her.That said, I am so done with angst and disgusting and dark caricatures of sex. Sex isn't always the most fun, but it should be, and it doesn't have to be like this for anyone with self-respect and dignity. It shouldn't turn your stomach or make you dislike yourself or your partner. It shouldn't be done BECAUSE you dislike yourself or your partner. Not every book should be about exactly what *I* believe, I understand that, but it shouldn't be THIS.Sex should be about mutual respect, pleasure in the little things of life, tender need, and an appreciation for the human form. Well, all that plus an orgasm.This book was so the disturbing antithesis to my beliefs about sex that I felt dirty after reading it and it crept into my mind pericoital for months. I read it 11 years ago, and it still makes me nauseous.
—sarafem
This intimate and beautifully written book is very unique owing to Steinke's ability to create an otherworldly setting. It's a love story which borders on sci-fi merely because it subverts the everyday by layng bare the funkiest elements of the narrator's psyche. Jesse, her suicide blonde, is a man-eater with tons of daddy issues and an obsession with her vagina. The writing is incredibly effortless. Steinke's strategically makes you love Jesse, seemingly without deploying common writer's mechanisms for character likeability. The (dark-comedy) plot is hilarious and gripping... imagine the film Young Adult written with a splash of abstractness and even greater depth. If you love dramas and screwed up love stories and groovily seductive dystopias and vivid writing, read this book!
—Jasten Mcgowan
