The Angel's Share A Fantasy

About the book

About The Angel's Share A Fantasy

From the Author My novel, The Angel's Share: A Fantasy, is a contemporary fantasy-satire. It's a comic-serious, provocative book in the tradition of Nathanael West's The Day Of The Locust or James Purdy's Cabot Wright Begins, or maybe even Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge. This is because it wraps its observations and criticisms about some of the most outrageous quirks of our contemporary American society in sometimes compassionate, sometimes hard-hitting caricature and humor. Among the subjects it examines: our media-driven, celebrity-obsessed culture; screaming, sensationalistic TV culture and TV talk shows; the pill-popping drug culture and the self-help movement; and our ongoing search and deep longing, at all levels of society, for some sense of personal spiritual fulfillment. It also offers a very colorful, unexpected twist on our usual notions about who and what angels are and how they behave. From the Back Cover The Angel's Share : A Fantasy is a kind of The Day Of The Locust for the Nineties. It's a rollicking satire set in a high-charged world where the media and showbiz meet and where egos are as vulnerable as they are inflated. Its story recalls the life-after-death misadventures of Ralph, the frumpy, British-American host of a national TV talk show, and the funky band of angels with whom he becomes unwittingly, helplessly involved. Ralph falls in love with Divina, their leader, an enigmatic Japanese rock star in a colored afro wig who turns out to be a senior cherub on a routine Earth mission that goes explosively, uncontrollably awry. Struck by a deep spiritual malaise, Ralph is also pressured by his TV network to beef up his program's ratings-or else. Soon his hip young talent scouts, who discover Divina dancing in a downtown clothes-boutique window, convince Ralph to feature her on his show. This mad fantasy's wacky cast of characters includes dizzy East Village club kids; an outrageous, black lesbian angel-diva named Hiawatha Lawonda Ping Pong Jones and her leather-clad girlfriend; Colonel Cockatoo, a pederast and children's TV-show host; Nola, a novice angel who gets caught up in Divina's meteoric rise and Ping Pong's weird nervous breakdown; Dr. Wally Goldberg, an old psychiatrist whose search for the truth leads straight to the bank; Ralph's bitchy, arch-rival producers, Emma Noseblower and Baba Grey; the pill-popping proponents of ProVal, a controversial wonder drug; and other oddballs, snoops and kind souls in this world and the next.

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