Wasted Beauty - ISBNLookup.com

Susan Adams

A veteran of New York's many bohemian mondes and demimondes, Bogosian sticks to the golden write-what-you-know rule, to great effect.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Actor Bogosian (Mall) takes the "opposites attract" conceit to an extreme in a well-crafted novel that's also a vicarious walk on the wild side. Before he crashes two very different ends of the social spectrum together, though, Bogosian develops each one separately, cultivating suspense: how will these characters come together? In one corner is Reba, a 20-year-old upstate New York farm girl who, along with her nasty brother, Billy, sells apples to Manhattanites on weekends. In a breathless series of events, she becomes separated from Billy and is spotted by a fashion photographer who turns her into a supermodel. In the other corner is Rick, a middle-aged Jewish doctor living in the suburbs with his family. While he likes his life, he's also chafing under certain domestic constraints. It's up to Billy to make them collide by hurtling off the deep end after losing his sister; he ends up in the emergency room, and Rick sends him to the psych ward. The model and the physician eventually begin a torrid, May/December romance that drives the latter toward divorce and the former into addiction. It's a great guilty pleasure of a story line (brainy schlump meets gorgeous goddess), and Bogosian fills it with fresh, frank turns of phrase the frazzled doctor's eyes are "like slit-open gray prunes" even if the ending feels a little too sanitized for the gritty story that preceded it. Agent, William Morris. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Farm girl becomes supermodel in actor Bogosian's dark, raunchy second novel (after Mall, 2000), about sex and drugs in the big city. Reba Cook is 20 when she loses both parents to cancer, leaving her alone with older brother Billy on their failing farm in upstate New York. She gets no comfort from her brother, a hard-drinking bully ashamed of lusting after her, or from her new boss, Frank, a bank manager unhappy with her oral sex technique. One Saturday in the city, selling their apples at the market alongside Billy, she allows herself to be picked up. The guy deflowers and discards her in short order. A second guy hits on her at a McDonald's, and this time Reba lucks out. Paul is a fashion photographer who sees the potential in this leggy blonde with beautiful eyes. In a heartbeat, she has an agency contract and becomes an overnight sensation. But this isn't just Reba's story. There's also Rick, a 45-year-old doctor with a lucrative private practice, a happy family in the burbs, and a raging midlife crisis. He has a swell wife in Laura and two sweet kids, yet he yearns to run wild, though so far all he has managed is a Portnoyesque involvement with his penis (there are three masturbation scenes). He gets a shot at liberation when Billy becomes his patient. If Reba has ascended to its heights, Billy has hurtled implausibly into the city's depths, and, now a violent derelict, he's been razor-slashed by drug dealers. Late in the story, Rick and Reba meet to discuss her brother. Reba is snorting heroin and sleeping around, and reckless doctor and needy model launch themselves into a grand passion. Will it consume them? The lovers' high-wire act, in the final third, is gripping, the earlierstuff, like Reba copping drugs, merely titillating. Not surprisingly, Bogosian has a fine ear: more dialogue and fewer interior monologues might have made for a leaner, more powerful tale.