- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Nov 8 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0684857278
- ISBN-13: 978-0684857275
- Product Dimensions: 22.3 x 14.8 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 449 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,217,526 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Penzler Pick, January 2001: Here Eric Bogosian, a playwright and actor, takes his keen eye to that particularly American venue, the mall. On any given day, the mall attracts hundreds of thousands of diverse characters who are not always there to shop. On this particular night, Bogosian concentrates on five of those characters, suburbanites who interact with each other in ways that are, for the most part, destructive.
Michel is an Haitian immigrant who works as a security guard at the mall. He's been there all evening and he spends his time thinking about his wife who died tragically. He misses her, but he will be forced to put all thoughts of her away as he becomes the first to deal with the horrendous events that start to unfold around closing time.
Jeff is a teenager who hooks up with his friends and drops acid. He wonders if Adelle likes him. She seems to, but she also seems to like his friend Beckett. Jeff's trip will get more surreal as the night progresses and will take him places he's never been before.
Donna is married with a son, but it doesn't seem to be enough. She is at the mall looking for romance and a little adventure. She'll find both.
Danny is a young businessman whose fetish for young women modeling underwear takes him to the women's dressing room at J.C. Penney. There he will find his own private nightmare.
And affecting them all is Mal. Mal is a speed freak who, before setting off for the mall with a car full of weapons, murders his mother and sets fire to his house. He is looking forward to an evening of more murder and mayhem.
This story moves along at the speed of an express train, one that isn't going quite where you thought it was. Bogosian has created a night that will not be easy to forget. --Otto Penzler
From Publishers Weekly
A faithful exegete of suburban nihilism, playwright and solo performer Bogosian delivers for his first novel a surreal "day in the life" tale that explores two of his trademark themes: suburban life and the illusory nature of "normalcy." Mal is a 30-something speed freak living with his mother in a drugged out fog, unwashed and virtually unconscious. After 90 days on crystal meth, Mal kills his mom, then goes on a rampage at the nearby mall. Bogosian uses this event to introduce a cross-section of mall life. Jeffrey, a dreadlocked teen, fantasizes about being a writer. He's got a crush on Adelle, whose narcissistic ennui he attributes to "a kind of efficiency. She's full of life but she's saving herself for the right moment...." His friend Berkeley has scored some retro windowpane acid, and so Jeff experiences Mal's fiery incursion in a hallucinatory state. Businessman Danny is a hapless, though hardly innocent, shopper at the mall, who spots Donna, an exhibitionist, sex-starved housewife performing a kinky striptease in a half-open dressing room. The police catch Danny peeping and arrest him, but then Mal, now shooting indiscriminately in the mall, pegs the cops, and Danny is left to wander around in handcuffs, which is how he runs into Adelle, who takes Danny on a sexy ride he may never recover from. While Bogosian's teen characters seem a little bit like rejects from a To Die For casting call, his droll remarks and dramatic pacing make this debut novel a typically Bogosian experienceDlively and unique. If this absurdist La Ronde sometimes goes over the edge, Bogosian's stature in contemporary pop culture, and his proven ability to work (and self-publicize) in numerous media, should give his novel legs. Agents, Claudia Cross, George Lane.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
"MAL!" Mary's voice cut like an airhorn through the aging ranch house. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
"MAL!" Mary's voice cut like an airhorn through the aging ranch house. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Smells Like Teen Spirit,
By Eric Thompson (Brighton, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mall (Hardcover)
I read this book in two nights and it worked for me very nicely. Sex, drugs and existential thinking and a pretty good plot. Bogosian comes from the theater and his characters reflect that. I especially liked the psychotic speed freak Mal. Bogosian (as I've said in my other review of his solo book) comes off as kind of simple, but at the end of the day, I think his ideas are complex. It's the way the whole thing is hung together. Long and short of it is that the book is a hot read and has a couple of good nasty sex scenes in it. I guess he's a genius, but on the other hand, who cares?
5.0 out of 5 stars
murder and mayhem coverge at the mall,
By
This review is from: Mall: A Novel (Hardcover)
Mal is a 37 year old strung-out junkie when he shoots his mom, torches his house and then goes to the mall to spread more mayhem. But it's not random -- he is on a mission, as he believes it was at this mall that the downward spiral to his life began.There at the mall are Michel, a Carribbean widower who works security, Jeff, a teenager in search of existentialism as he hangs out with his druggie friends, Donna, a bored insatiable housewife looking for approval and lust from men, and Dan, a nice married man who unfortunately liked staring at Donna in the dressing room. From this modern stage explodes murder and fire of both a mall and all the human emotions (guilt, rage, remorse) ina fiery scene amongst people who are strangers but are connected by an ugly soulless building --- the American mall.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Disturbing Trip To The Mall,
By
This review is from: Mall: A Novel (Hardcover)
Actor/playwright Eric Bogosian is a very talented artist, and I've admired his work for well over a decade. However, he had never written a novel before, until now. Bogosian has concocted a dark, disturbing tale with his first novel, "Mall," telling the story of five people whose lives intertwine on a very violent, bloody day at the shopping mall: Mal is a speed freak who kills his mother at home and then causes more violence & mayhem at the mall, Michel is the widowed immigrant security guard who goes after Mal, Donna is a lonely housewife looking for sex & adventure, Danny is a married businessman with a huge weakness for beautiful underwear models, and Jeff is a teenager on acid who goes off on a philosophical quest.The book takes a little while to get going---about 50 pages or so---as Bogosian sets things up and introduces us to the characters, and it's a bit of a slow read. But once Mal gets to the shopping mall and begins his rampage, "Mall" finally hits the ground running and becomes a riveting book you can't put down, filled with lots of unexpected twists & turns. The book is mostly narrated, with only occasional dialogue from the characters here & there, but nonetheless, Bogosian is a very commanding tour guide as he takes you into the minds of these stressed-out souls (to say the least). Unfortunately, after taking the reader on a bravura ride through a suburban nightmare, the book's ending is a bit unsatisfying & inconclusive, as if Bogosian couldn't quite figure out how to end the story. It doesn't ruin the book for me, but it is disappointing.I don't think you could make a movie out of this book (nor would I want to see one), but for the most part, "Mall" is a very engrossing read. For his first stab at novel writing, Eric Bogosian has created a very good, disturbing dark tale.
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