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Bruno Dante #3
Spitting Off Tall Buildings
Bruno Dante - aspirant playwright, part-time depressive and long-time drunk - has hitchhiked cross country. Escaping the sunshine, have-a-nice-day culture of L.A. for the more cynical climate of New York.
He should fit right in. But if there's money for beer he's sure to mess things up.
A rut of deadbeat temping jobs follow. But Dante won't play office politics or kiss ass, so they don't last. Longer stints as the night manager of a run-down hotel, a window cleaner and, finally, a cabbie, are punctuated by whacked-out affairs, drinking binges and bouts of depression.
He should fit right in. But if there's money for beer he's sure to mess things up.
A rut of deadbeat temping jobs follow. But Dante won't play office politics or kiss ass, so they don't last. Longer stints as the night manager of a run-down hotel, a window cleaner and, finally, a cabbie, are punctuated by whacked-out affairs, drinking binges and bouts of depression.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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331 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
January 13, 2021
”Soon [my brain] was assuring me that my story was puke, worthless cockshit. Another moron idea I’d left incomplete. A failure.
I got up and went to my writing table, looking down at the pages and pages of words. It was true. I saw the misspellings, the hurried errors, my hopeless, inaccurate punctuation. Slobbo! I flung the pages in the direction of the trash can. I was talentless. No wonder I drank and let queers suck my cock. Loser! Stuck with no job, near penniless, walled in like a cockroach surrounded by a rooming house full of junkies and perverts. I was finally where I really belonged.”
Bruno Fante, the alter ego of the writer Dan Fante, has moved from California to New York. He’s still trying to escape the spectre of his brilliant father as he attempts to string together words that would make his father proud, if said father were still alive.
Writing nor life is going well.
He is broke.
He drinks too much, and when he drinks too much, he likes to find a grungy movie theater to have men suck his cock...and sometimes more. When he is sober, he is heterosexual and feels, don’t know if guilty is the right word, almost more betrayed by his desperate need for “queer” sex when inebriated.
He has to find a job fast, but Bruno is not easy to employ. He isn’t an ideal employee, given his penchant for arriving late, calling in sick, coming to work drunk, and telling his bosses exactly what he thinks of their character. Generally, when Bruno lands a job, he may as well start looking for the next one. There are two jobs he takes that have great possibilities for some Bruno extravagant behavior—dangling from a harness and washing windows and driving a cab. The problem is, I don’t feel like Dan Fante takes well enough advantage of those opportunities for writing gold. Can you imagine what Bruno could have witnessed gazing in those hundreds of windows? Or how about the interesting characters he might have met in the backseat of his cab? Well, you will have to imagine them because Fante didn’t write about them.
After two fun and irreverent books set in L.A., I was really looking forward to the Bruno Fante hurricane flying down the streets of New York. This book lacks the crisp flurry of punches that make the first two books so good. It feels more like Fante caught a punch in the second round that made him woozy, and in the third, his punches are feeble so, even when he hits the target, he fails to have any force behind the blow. I’m still looking forward to the fourth book, 86’D, and hopefully, Fante will regain his equilibrium and land a knockout punch in the fourth and final round.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/
I got up and went to my writing table, looking down at the pages and pages of words. It was true. I saw the misspellings, the hurried errors, my hopeless, inaccurate punctuation. Slobbo! I flung the pages in the direction of the trash can. I was talentless. No wonder I drank and let queers suck my cock. Loser! Stuck with no job, near penniless, walled in like a cockroach surrounded by a rooming house full of junkies and perverts. I was finally where I really belonged.”
Bruno Fante, the alter ego of the writer Dan Fante, has moved from California to New York. He’s still trying to escape the spectre of his brilliant father as he attempts to string together words that would make his father proud, if said father were still alive.
Writing nor life is going well.
He is broke.
He drinks too much, and when he drinks too much, he likes to find a grungy movie theater to have men suck his cock...and sometimes more. When he is sober, he is heterosexual and feels, don’t know if guilty is the right word, almost more betrayed by his desperate need for “queer” sex when inebriated.
He has to find a job fast, but Bruno is not easy to employ. He isn’t an ideal employee, given his penchant for arriving late, calling in sick, coming to work drunk, and telling his bosses exactly what he thinks of their character. Generally, when Bruno lands a job, he may as well start looking for the next one. There are two jobs he takes that have great possibilities for some Bruno extravagant behavior—dangling from a harness and washing windows and driving a cab. The problem is, I don’t feel like Dan Fante takes well enough advantage of those opportunities for writing gold. Can you imagine what Bruno could have witnessed gazing in those hundreds of windows? Or how about the interesting characters he might have met in the backseat of his cab? Well, you will have to imagine them because Fante didn’t write about them.
After two fun and irreverent books set in L.A., I was really looking forward to the Bruno Fante hurricane flying down the streets of New York. This book lacks the crisp flurry of punches that make the first two books so good. It feels more like Fante caught a punch in the second round that made him woozy, and in the third, his punches are feeble so, even when he hits the target, he fails to have any force behind the blow. I’m still looking forward to the fourth book, 86’D, and hopefully, Fante will regain his equilibrium and land a knockout punch in the fourth and final round.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/
March 23, 2014
Im glad i discovered this book and Dan. Better than his old man, in my opinion..i will next read mooch and chump change.
November 2, 2021
Dan Fante makes Bukowski look like a solid citizen. This isn't a compliment.
August 13, 2025
A Gritty, High-Stakes Spiral in the Concrete Jungle
Dan Fante’s “Spitting Off Tall Buildings” launches Bruno Dante into the skyscraper canyons of 1990s New York, where his particular brand of self-destruction takes on a sharper, more desperate edge. This isn’t just another drunken stumble, it’s a high-wire act between fraudulent job hunting and the familiar lure of the bottom shelf, with Bruno’s razor-wire narration dragging you through both with equal parts dark humor and existential dread.
Fante’s prose remains brutally effective, blending cringe-worthy satire with moments of startling vulnerability. The city itself becomes a character, all flickering neon and crushing anonymity, while Bruno’s toxic relationships reveal glimmers of the man he could’ve been beneath the wreckage. Some cycles of benders and bad decisions feel familiar if you’ve ridden this train before, and the pacing wobbles between office absurdity and emotional freefall. But when it clicks, it’s electric: a portrait of addiction that’s less about redemption than the raw, ugly fight to stay alive in a world that rewards faking it.
It’s not a 4 but it’s near, maybe a 3,7 coz it’s Fante at his most compelling flawed, just like Bruno himself.
Dan Fante’s “Spitting Off Tall Buildings” launches Bruno Dante into the skyscraper canyons of 1990s New York, where his particular brand of self-destruction takes on a sharper, more desperate edge. This isn’t just another drunken stumble, it’s a high-wire act between fraudulent job hunting and the familiar lure of the bottom shelf, with Bruno’s razor-wire narration dragging you through both with equal parts dark humor and existential dread.
Fante’s prose remains brutally effective, blending cringe-worthy satire with moments of startling vulnerability. The city itself becomes a character, all flickering neon and crushing anonymity, while Bruno’s toxic relationships reveal glimmers of the man he could’ve been beneath the wreckage. Some cycles of benders and bad decisions feel familiar if you’ve ridden this train before, and the pacing wobbles between office absurdity and emotional freefall. But when it clicks, it’s electric: a portrait of addiction that’s less about redemption than the raw, ugly fight to stay alive in a world that rewards faking it.
It’s not a 4 but it’s near, maybe a 3,7 coz it’s Fante at his most compelling flawed, just like Bruno himself.
August 6, 2017
Very grim, flat, surprisingly honest, straight-up, rather depressing... Dante seems to be a bisexual character with evident homosexual desires... he's torn-up about it. Also like his father he can be a bit of a jerk to the people around him.
I won't say this rocked my world but it wasn't boring either.
I won't say this rocked my world but it wasn't boring either.
April 7, 2020
This is the third novel I've read by Dan Fante. He never disappoints. This book is different from his other "Bruno Dante" novels, which are mostly set in LA — this one is set in NYC — but still here is his terse, airtight writing style, his grit, his edge, his wit, and his bruised but big beautiful heart.
April 21, 2025
Fun enough at its length, but really just a poor facsimile of his father. Bruno Dante is a less-informed Arturo Bandini. He lives in rooming houses in New York instead of LA. He's violent, and hateful, and drunk, and underachieving. Dante ends up in interesting situations, but he just doesn't have the heart of Bandini.
April 24, 2020
meh... Dan Fante is an engaging storyteller which kept me reading right through to the end, but the story in itself did not appeal. More like journal entries with a rather abrupt ending... and now? Is there a second part? Doubt I would read it in any case.
August 9, 2023
The Bruno Dante saga has taken a sour turn. More like a story book of debauchery than a novel. The writing, which to this point has been steller, also dropped in quality.
I say the negatives, but I still enjoyed it
Round up 3
I say the negatives, but I still enjoyed it
Round up 3
October 21, 2018
Love Dan's writing, but for some reason this was just not a story I cared to follow. Maybe the change of setting from L.A. to NY. Boring and not much to go on with this one. Skip ahead.
March 20, 2019
Enjoyed it. Fast and funny at times. Bukowski-esque, as others have already said. Ending left me a bit flat. Didn’t get the emotional payoff I was hoping for. But a fun, quick read.
Want to read
July 19, 2020elibrary
July 26, 2020
About the same amount of alcohol & even more struggling: Dan Fante is still going strong, but he's starting to repeat himself a little in part 3 of the Bruno Dante series.
November 25, 2022
Hawk putuh
October 13, 2024
Bruno Dante is a loner, a guy who wants to spend time in his room reading Tennesse Williams’ plays but has to venture out to earn money. He cleans windows, drives a cab, and is an usher at a theatre. He hates his bosses, customers, and sometimes his colleagues.
Going back into his room the ruminative inner voice of judgement doesn’t leave him alone for a minute:
“I got up and went to my writing table, looking down at the pages and pages of words. It was true. I saw the misspellings, the hurried errors, my hopeless, inaccurate punctuation. Slobbo! I flung the pages in the direction of the trash can. I was talentless. No wonder I drank and let queers suck my cock. Loser! Stuck with no job, near penniless, walled in like a cockroach surrounded by a rooming house full of junkies and perverts. I was finally where I really belonged.”
I’m not a big fan of novels where the main character is a would-be writer – it’s one of the things I didn’t like about Ask the Dusk, by the author’s more famous father, John Fante. I will never read something by Fante Sr. again but can’t wait to get to the next Dan Fante.
Bruno Dante, Dan Fante’s alter ego in the book, is trying to write a story about a magician tricking a boy into poisoning his dog. It sounds like a dark Harry Potter tale. But what’s happening to him outside – the world of shitty jobs – is the material that will eventually inspire good writing. This is ironic but not unusual for a writer. He wants to hide from the world outside but this world is what he has to write about. In writing about it he’ll process the pain.
When things go wrong with a job and he gets fired or quits, inevitably he goes on a drinking binge:
“The run lasted three days after that. When I finally sobered up my mind began mercilessly replaying some of the flashes, the unquenchable need for sex and depravity. The thoughts evoked so much disgust that I had to stop them – shut them off – there was a terrible need to kill myself; cut or stab my flesh. To die immediately.”
I’ll get to the self-harm, but in terms of sex, when he needs it and has no money, it’s with men at movie theatres. Sex, as in blowjobs. But when he has money:
“… I was waiting in the lounge of the Oriental Massage in Times Square; waiting to spend an hour with Sandy, the pretty Korean hooker. “
This is a common sort of sex life for a down-and-out alcoholic. It’s something I could be criticised for saying these days, but I don’t think he was bisexual. In actions sure, in orientation no. It’s just that sex with men is always there when he needs it. Fante’s descriptions of illicit sex are less detached than those of William Burroughs. None of the boozing and sex can silence the demons and so he cuts his wrists, survives, and gets locked up.
“In New York State there is a law that says that they are allowed to lock you down in the squirrel ward for ten days when you attempt to take your own life. It doesn’t matter if you ate pills and cut your wrists, drank drain cleaner or injected 200 ccs of nail polish remover into your carotid artery. If you live, they’ve got you.”
After that he gets a therapist he likes:
“To Jack, being an alcoholic is a mind disease like manic depression. It describes the way an alkie’s mind has come to work. Sober or drunk. He said that my depressions and rages and disgusting degenerate behavior and the other stuff were by-products of my alcoholism.”
Dante is a madman and alcohol has been his medicine but it’s turning on him now at age 34. I had a similar experience in my mid-thirties, alcohol would no longer calm my anxiety but instead heightened it to unbearable levels.
“Booze, Jack says, can work real well for years, like a pill, to treat this personality. But eventually it has to turn on you, stop working, and bite you on the ass. According to Jack, that’s what happened to me.”
Missing in this review are quotes of the descriptions of being a cab driver, window washer etc. These are highlights – up there with Bukowski’s Post Office, if not quite as sustained. Spitting Off Tall Buildings hangs around for a punchy hundred pages.
Going back into his room the ruminative inner voice of judgement doesn’t leave him alone for a minute:
“I got up and went to my writing table, looking down at the pages and pages of words. It was true. I saw the misspellings, the hurried errors, my hopeless, inaccurate punctuation. Slobbo! I flung the pages in the direction of the trash can. I was talentless. No wonder I drank and let queers suck my cock. Loser! Stuck with no job, near penniless, walled in like a cockroach surrounded by a rooming house full of junkies and perverts. I was finally where I really belonged.”
I’m not a big fan of novels where the main character is a would-be writer – it’s one of the things I didn’t like about Ask the Dusk, by the author’s more famous father, John Fante. I will never read something by Fante Sr. again but can’t wait to get to the next Dan Fante.
Bruno Dante, Dan Fante’s alter ego in the book, is trying to write a story about a magician tricking a boy into poisoning his dog. It sounds like a dark Harry Potter tale. But what’s happening to him outside – the world of shitty jobs – is the material that will eventually inspire good writing. This is ironic but not unusual for a writer. He wants to hide from the world outside but this world is what he has to write about. In writing about it he’ll process the pain.
When things go wrong with a job and he gets fired or quits, inevitably he goes on a drinking binge:
“The run lasted three days after that. When I finally sobered up my mind began mercilessly replaying some of the flashes, the unquenchable need for sex and depravity. The thoughts evoked so much disgust that I had to stop them – shut them off – there was a terrible need to kill myself; cut or stab my flesh. To die immediately.”
I’ll get to the self-harm, but in terms of sex, when he needs it and has no money, it’s with men at movie theatres. Sex, as in blowjobs. But when he has money:
“… I was waiting in the lounge of the Oriental Massage in Times Square; waiting to spend an hour with Sandy, the pretty Korean hooker. “
This is a common sort of sex life for a down-and-out alcoholic. It’s something I could be criticised for saying these days, but I don’t think he was bisexual. In actions sure, in orientation no. It’s just that sex with men is always there when he needs it. Fante’s descriptions of illicit sex are less detached than those of William Burroughs. None of the boozing and sex can silence the demons and so he cuts his wrists, survives, and gets locked up.
“In New York State there is a law that says that they are allowed to lock you down in the squirrel ward for ten days when you attempt to take your own life. It doesn’t matter if you ate pills and cut your wrists, drank drain cleaner or injected 200 ccs of nail polish remover into your carotid artery. If you live, they’ve got you.”
After that he gets a therapist he likes:
“To Jack, being an alcoholic is a mind disease like manic depression. It describes the way an alkie’s mind has come to work. Sober or drunk. He said that my depressions and rages and disgusting degenerate behavior and the other stuff were by-products of my alcoholism.”
Dante is a madman and alcohol has been his medicine but it’s turning on him now at age 34. I had a similar experience in my mid-thirties, alcohol would no longer calm my anxiety but instead heightened it to unbearable levels.
“Booze, Jack says, can work real well for years, like a pill, to treat this personality. But eventually it has to turn on you, stop working, and bite you on the ass. According to Jack, that’s what happened to me.”
Missing in this review are quotes of the descriptions of being a cab driver, window washer etc. These are highlights – up there with Bukowski’s Post Office, if not quite as sustained. Spitting Off Tall Buildings hangs around for a punchy hundred pages.
Read
June 19, 2009Read the STOP SMILING interview with author Dan Fante
Q&A: Dan Fante
By Anthony Reynolds
Novelist, playwright and poet Dan Fante is the second son of John Fante.
He is well regarded in Europe and his novels include Mooch, Chump Change and Spitting off Tall Buildings
Stop Smiling: As both a novelist and a screenwriter, what are the main similarities between the processes? And what are the major differences?
Dan Fante: I don't mean to be overly unkind here, but screenwriting is a process quite unlike legitimate prose. Screenwriters are the errand boys for producers and directors. The do what they are told to do: "Fix this. Make her tits bigger. Let's have her be a victim of incest." That kind of nonsense. Screenwriting is not writing. It is a collaborative process in which the so-called creative person becomes an underpaid, over-ruled typist.
SS: What are your experiences with Hollywood? How close have you gotten to a script becoming a film?
DF: My book Mooch will be a film this year or next. I wrote the screenplay. Thankfully, having written the original document, the book itself is our point of reference in writing the movie. But make no mistake, what I said above still holds sway, to at least some extent.
SS: Have you met many in the business who are aware of the Fante name within the history of Hollywood?
DF: Most people in Hollywood know the name John Fante. Of course they haven't read his stuff, they've just heard he was a good novelist. And, by having an option on one or more of his books, they might become rich. John Fante is a commodity — like fertilizer is a commodity.
Read the complete interview...
Q&A: Dan Fante
By Anthony Reynolds
Novelist, playwright and poet Dan Fante is the second son of John Fante.
He is well regarded in Europe and his novels include Mooch, Chump Change and Spitting off Tall Buildings
Stop Smiling: As both a novelist and a screenwriter, what are the main similarities between the processes? And what are the major differences?
Dan Fante: I don't mean to be overly unkind here, but screenwriting is a process quite unlike legitimate prose. Screenwriters are the errand boys for producers and directors. The do what they are told to do: "Fix this. Make her tits bigger. Let's have her be a victim of incest." That kind of nonsense. Screenwriting is not writing. It is a collaborative process in which the so-called creative person becomes an underpaid, over-ruled typist.
SS: What are your experiences with Hollywood? How close have you gotten to a script becoming a film?
DF: My book Mooch will be a film this year or next. I wrote the screenplay. Thankfully, having written the original document, the book itself is our point of reference in writing the movie. But make no mistake, what I said above still holds sway, to at least some extent.
SS: Have you met many in the business who are aware of the Fante name within the history of Hollywood?
DF: Most people in Hollywood know the name John Fante. Of course they haven't read his stuff, they've just heard he was a good novelist. And, by having an option on one or more of his books, they might become rich. John Fante is a commodity — like fertilizer is a commodity.
Read the complete interview...
August 2, 2012
At the end of Chump Change I wondered if Fante would be able to keep up the pace for 3 more semi-autobiographical novels. I also wondered whether I could keep up if in fact he did. Now having read them in close succession I can say that he’s kept it interesting without wearing me out. Bruno Dante continues to be a serial juicer with a masochistic edge and a deep dislike of people. With women, his relationships (if they can be called that) are cruel and dehumanizing, almost as bad as the jobs he takes to support his habits. As a boiler room salesman, taxi driver, movie usher, window washer, limo driver and working in other terrible jobs Bruno is in one bad situation after another. All the while he is trying to put his words on paper, scratching out poems in the cab or typing short stories in his motel room. The stories were hard to read, but the prose was direct and approachable. In the end I’d say reading these books is like having an eloquent tour guide to the dark side of a city you don’t care about: I don’t think I wanted to know more about these aspects of life, but I couldn’t resist Fante as a story teller.
August 17, 2015
This book had a very familiar feel to it's writing style. Very obviously trying not to follow in the footsteps of his father, I felt like I was reading something pulled out of the mind of a less deranged, but equally drunk Charles Bukowski, which is incredibly appropriate as John Fante inspired Charles a great deal.
The story itself was well thought out, cleverly strung together by what I would assume are several journal entries, or thoughts drunkenly scribbled on dirty wet bar napkins at the tail end of an otherwise wasted night, probably spent drinking gut-rot wine and chasing filthy hookers.
I will not spoil the story with details of it characters but I will say each one was so very carefully written out that I felt like I knew those exact people, that I passed them on the street at least once in my life. I will reveal that I have in fact encountered a Fat Murphy more than twice in my lifetime and will probably have to endure that hard-assed pretentious personality at least once more.
The story itself was well thought out, cleverly strung together by what I would assume are several journal entries, or thoughts drunkenly scribbled on dirty wet bar napkins at the tail end of an otherwise wasted night, probably spent drinking gut-rot wine and chasing filthy hookers.
I will not spoil the story with details of it characters but I will say each one was so very carefully written out that I felt like I knew those exact people, that I passed them on the street at least once in my life. I will reveal that I have in fact encountered a Fat Murphy more than twice in my lifetime and will probably have to endure that hard-assed pretentious personality at least once more.
June 2, 2010
About fifteen years ago a friend gave me a book by John Fante and told me to read it. I opened the book and the words jumped off the page. The next day I went to the library and checked out every book I could find that was written by John Fante.
Flash forward to 2010...Nostalgically haunting the stacks of the Portland Public Library, I notice another Fante in the F section (Remember Arturo Bandini: "make room for me boys, right here in the B's"). I was intrigued. By virtue of his pedigree, I gave Dan Fante a chance.
Dan Fante writes with the same immediacy as his father, but he goes to much darker places. He's dived into the deepest Los Angeles cesspools, and somehow lived to tell the tale. That he's willing to do so with such honesty is to be commended. Humanity and heartbreak survive through the alcoholism and pain.
Flash forward to 2010...Nostalgically haunting the stacks of the Portland Public Library, I notice another Fante in the F section (Remember Arturo Bandini: "make room for me boys, right here in the B's"). I was intrigued. By virtue of his pedigree, I gave Dan Fante a chance.
Dan Fante writes with the same immediacy as his father, but he goes to much darker places. He's dived into the deepest Los Angeles cesspools, and somehow lived to tell the tale. That he's willing to do so with such honesty is to be commended. Humanity and heartbreak survive through the alcoholism and pain.
June 24, 2012
Seemed unfinished, like it ended mid-sentence. Was it a hurried end to get the book out, or just some high-brow literary nonsense? Fante (Father and Son), Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Thompson, Palahniuk, Neilan, Pollock, Ellis, O'Connor, et. al., if I may lump them together (and probably a few I left out) are sort of like authors of harlequins for men. Cause the characters are the tough guys men always wanted to be ... a thorough binge of testosterone, loveless anti-heroes, and literary licensure describing the revolting and oftentimes humorous details of the feeling, drinking man. Complete guy-gasm stuff.
September 1, 2016
A very goofy book about author-avatar Bruno Dante who can't deal with the fact that he's homosexual/bi-curious, so he spits off of tall buildings and gets into fights.
Look, Bruno, it's not that bad. If you like dick, then you like dick. No need to get a bug up your butt about it.
The book ends with a wonderfully ridiculous scene in which . The book was almost worth it for that alone, but I can't say I recommend this one.
Look, Bruno, it's not that bad. If you like dick, then you like dick. No need to get a bug up your butt about it.
The book ends with a wonderfully ridiculous scene in which . The book was almost worth it for that alone, but I can't say I recommend this one.
June 1, 2014
Closer to 3.75 compared to the first two semi autos that Fante has done. This one was for my taste a bit less of a gross out fest( in a good way in the first two) as Dante is back in nyc, after his LA adventures. Lots of wacky jobs give it a down and out in London and Paris vibe. Bruno is almost a functioning human being by the end of the book. Can't wait to see how he mucks that up in the next one.
October 28, 2009
good, really good. but i needed more. comparison to bukowski is a given. everything's developed and the story has texture and all but - well, like you could blow through this on an airplane ... know what i mean? probably end up drunk by the last page though. in the same breath, can't wait to read more.
January 24, 2014
Man, Dan Fante is an asshole, but he's a brilliant writer and an engaging story teller. Even the moments of redemption in this novel are grim, and I love it. It's gritty autobiographical fiction about an asshole drunk (GAFAAD) - if that description makes you cringe, the book is not for you. If, on the other hand, you enjoy the GAFAAD genre, this is a superb rendering.
December 1, 2013
Interesting. Very well written, prose is simple, clear, immediate, and the story compelling. Just didn't like the main character much, have read too much about alcoholic losers and hate the feeling of inevitable doom that accompanies these stories. I believe much of this is autobiographical, which makes it harder to a degree. Worthwhile reading if you like hard edged masculine writing
July 8, 2010
Not bad. Pretty short though. I wanted the story to continue, but I suppose the ending was well enough. Dante's character is pretty relate-able, though more in a "we all think it, but he actually acts on it" kind of way
November 14, 2011
Deuxième titre de la saga Dante, après Los Angeles nous voici à New York. Moins poignant que le premier volume le livre se lit cependant très facilement, même en VO, et c'est avec plaisir que j’enchaînerais sur les autres !
September 17, 2012
I liked the writing style, and it was definitely interesting to watch the main character self-destruct, but there was no context....it was hard to empathize with him because the author gives NO background information to help readers care about him.
November 14, 2012
Not my usual kind of fiction, I read it not knowing the summary, it lasted a few hours, was quickly read and kept me interested, wondering if the main character would end up dead or survive. I liked it. Enough to be sad to reach the end.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews