Peyton Amberg by Tama Janowitz

 From Goodreads: Peyton Amberg is a young woman growing ever restless in her marriage, and ever hopeful that the next bed will produce someone more exciting. As she moves from man to man, she slowly but surely loses her youthfulness, her good looks, even her sanity, as her paramours become rougher and the sex more brutal.
A savvy riff on the classic figure of Madame Bovary, Peyton Amberg is a caustic and brilliant satire of contemporary marriage, as it charts the free-floating lust and exploits of a woman yearning for fulfillment outside of rigid societal structure.

Two things made me pick this book up, number 1 the name (at the time i had been watching one tree hill alot) number 2 the front cover which showed a goth girl which intrigued me - however i don't think it is a very good cover.

Peyton Amberg is from a very troubled background, her brother has been in jail, her sister has two kids and a husband who left her, and her mum is screwed up from years of severe depression treated with electric shock treatment during long stretches of time in mental hospitals. In her mid twenties she goes into a bar with her best friend Victoria and meets Barry a Jewish dentist from a good rich Long Island background. She marries him and settles to a life in the Upper East side of Manhattan in a nice apartment with a part time job as a travel agent, but soon Barry starts to annoy her as he doesn't want to do anything exciting and is allergic to nearly everything and always complaining.
 She gets offered her first free trip to Rio and leaves dressed as her mother in law thinks she should and nervous, on the plane her wallet gets stolen by a Brazilian family sat next to her, in a panic she gets help from a very rich older man Germano, from that meeting onwards she sleeps with strangers where ever she goes as her relationship with Barry gets more strained. The story chops and changes between 3 different times, her time in Brazil with Germano, from meeting Barry through to her wedding and subsequent birth of her son Cash, and in Hong Kong with Xian Rong a chinese wannabe gangster. The constant feeling of the story is a woman who can not accept what she has and believes it will be ruined so has mindless one night stands to get away from her life and her constant hatred for herself.
 Overall i thought it was a great novel it is thought-provoking and funny in places, and dark and intense in others. The story and all the people in it will stay with me for a long time.  I will be researching more titles by Tama and hopefully they will live up to this great novel.




4 out of 5 stars