Katerina
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning comes Katerina, James Frey’s highly anticipated new novel set in 1992 Paris and contemporary Los Angeles.
A kiss, a touch. A smile and a beating heart. Love and sex and dreams, art and drugs and the madness of youth. Betrayal and heartbreak, regret and pain, the melancholy of age. Katerina, the explosive new novel by America’s most controversial writer, is a sweeping love story alternating between 1992 Paris and Los Angeles in 2018.
At its center are a young writer and a young model on the verge of fame, both reckless, impulsive, addicted, and deeply in love. Twenty-five years later, the writer is rich, famous, and numb, and he wants to drive his car into a tree, when he receives an anonymous message that draws him back to the life, and possibly the love, he abandoned years prior. Written in the same percussive, propulsive, dazzling, breathtaking style as A Million Little Pieces, Katerina echoes and complements that most controversial of memoirs, and plays with the same issues of fiction and reality that created, nearly destroyed, and then recreated James Frey in the American imagination.
A kiss, a touch. A smile and a beating heart. Love and sex and dreams, art and drugs and the madness of youth. Betrayal and heartbreak, regret and pain, the melancholy of age. Katerina, the explosive new novel by America’s most controversial writer, is a sweeping love story alternating between 1992 Paris and Los Angeles in 2018.
At its center are a young writer and a young model on the verge of fame, both reckless, impulsive, addicted, and deeply in love. Twenty-five years later, the writer is rich, famous, and numb, and he wants to drive his car into a tree, when he receives an anonymous message that draws him back to the life, and possibly the love, he abandoned years prior. Written in the same percussive, propulsive, dazzling, breathtaking style as A Million Little Pieces, Katerina echoes and complements that most controversial of memoirs, and plays with the same issues of fiction and reality that created, nearly destroyed, and then recreated James Frey in the American imagination.
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Community Reviews
thenextgoodbook.com
Katerina by James Frey
306 pages
What’s it about?
Jay drops out of college to move to Paris and become a great writer. Along the way he drinks a lot, snorts a lot, and has a lot of sex with a lot of women. He meets a young model named Katerina and falls madly in love. They proceed to drink a lot, snort a lot, and have a lot of sex. The novel goes back and forth from his time in Paris in the 1990’s to present day L.A.
What did it make me think about-
So, James Frey is the infamous author who wrote “A Million Little Pieces” a few years ago. My thought was that everyone deserves a break- maybe he just got caught up and lied about his memoir. He might be a great guy. This latest book is obviously autobiographical as well, but Frey at least has learned not to label it a memoir. The main character, Jay, just comes across as an intense, full of himself, jerk. “ I was just starting to write, after many failed attempts and hundreds of pages of unreadable crap, the first book I would publish. I was focused, ambitious as fuck, still believed I could burn down the world with words, fell asleep thinking about it, woke up thinking about it, spent my days trying to make it a reality.” The truth is that my main thought while reading this book was, “ I really don’t like this guy, or this book”.
Should I read it?
From my viewpoint- James Frey seems to be trying too hard to be cool. He swings from saying he doesn't care what people think- to writing about lighting the literary world on fire. All in all- he just seems to take himself too seriously. If you are in the mood for a lot of ranting and some soft porn then this is your book. Otherwise don’t waste your time.
Quote-
“ When I look at art I don’t have to consider whether the work is fiction or non fiction, whether it’s a genre painting or a literary painting, whether it’s serious or commercial, where the artist went to school or whether the publisher has prestige or not. It is what it is. Something someone made because it is inside of them, because they were compelled to make it. I want to write books in the same manner. I have words inside of me, and I am compelled to make something with them. They will be what they will be, on their own terms, books. Fuck all the rest of it”
If you like this try-
Lost Empress by Sergio De La Pava
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
Open City by Teju Cole
Sweet bitter by Stephanie Danler
Katerina by James Frey
306 pages
What’s it about?
Jay drops out of college to move to Paris and become a great writer. Along the way he drinks a lot, snorts a lot, and has a lot of sex with a lot of women. He meets a young model named Katerina and falls madly in love. They proceed to drink a lot, snort a lot, and have a lot of sex. The novel goes back and forth from his time in Paris in the 1990’s to present day L.A.
What did it make me think about-
So, James Frey is the infamous author who wrote “A Million Little Pieces” a few years ago. My thought was that everyone deserves a break- maybe he just got caught up and lied about his memoir. He might be a great guy. This latest book is obviously autobiographical as well, but Frey at least has learned not to label it a memoir. The main character, Jay, just comes across as an intense, full of himself, jerk. “ I was just starting to write, after many failed attempts and hundreds of pages of unreadable crap, the first book I would publish. I was focused, ambitious as fuck, still believed I could burn down the world with words, fell asleep thinking about it, woke up thinking about it, spent my days trying to make it a reality.” The truth is that my main thought while reading this book was, “ I really don’t like this guy, or this book”.
Should I read it?
From my viewpoint- James Frey seems to be trying too hard to be cool. He swings from saying he doesn't care what people think- to writing about lighting the literary world on fire. All in all- he just seems to take himself too seriously. If you are in the mood for a lot of ranting and some soft porn then this is your book. Otherwise don’t waste your time.
Quote-
“ When I look at art I don’t have to consider whether the work is fiction or non fiction, whether it’s a genre painting or a literary painting, whether it’s serious or commercial, where the artist went to school or whether the publisher has prestige or not. It is what it is. Something someone made because it is inside of them, because they were compelled to make it. I want to write books in the same manner. I have words inside of me, and I am compelled to make something with them. They will be what they will be, on their own terms, books. Fuck all the rest of it”
If you like this try-
Lost Empress by Sergio De La Pava
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
Open City by Teju Cole
Sweet bitter by Stephanie Danler
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