Everyone's Pretty

By Lydia Millet

Book Overview

A "supremely wacky and] astute" novel by a PEN Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist (The Washington Post).

In Los Angeles, Dean Decetes, a pornographer with messianic delusions, spins out of control, spending his time drinking himself into a stupor, getting beaten up by strangers he's recklessly insulted, stealing credit cards to pay for sex, being arrested, begging favors, and mounting a PR campaign to make himself famous with the help of a loyal foot soldier--a porn-loving midget he met in jail.

Meanwhile his pious, romantic spinster sister, who reluctantly keeps house for him, busies herself writing quasi-religious love notes to the boss she worships, and two of her coworkers at the statistics company--an obsessive-compulsive Christian Scientist in a twisted marriage and a promiscuous, depressed blond bombshell--become enmeshed in her life as she dreams of ridding herself of her freeloading brother and being carried away on a white horse by her employer.

Then a teenage math genius runs away from home after her mother humiliates her in school, and hooks up at a bar with Decetes's suicidal editor. Told from five points of view, over three wild days in which these lives intersect, this is a rollickingly funny yet heart-wrenching novel from one of today's most acclaimed literary voices.

"Taken at surface level, its presentation of over-the-top characters placed in bizarre situations is supremely wacky, but underneath is an astute examination of how contemporary society fosters alienation and loneliness so acute that it takes outsized actions to allow any possibility of driving the demons away." --The Washington Post

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932360778
• ISBN13: 9781932360776
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Soft Skull
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

I'd Give It 4.5 Stars If I Could!

What a fantastic little book! Not only is it a very funny read, but the characters are so richly drawn that they'll stay with you for quite a while. A couple of weeks after reading the book, I still find myself contemplating who should play each character if it is ever made into a movie. Now I know that it's doubtful that this "under the radar" gem would ever make it to the silver screen, but I couldn't help imagining either Phillip Seymour Hoffman or Jack Black as the vulgar, yet magnetic personality of Dean Descetes. Give this book a try, I guarantee that you'll be quickly passing it along to your friends as a "must" read.

Sex-Kitten.net Review:

Rumored to be inspired by author Lydia Millet's two-year stint working as a copy editor at Hustler Magazine, `Everybody's Pretty' centers around the world of freelance porn reviewer Dean Decetes. While that may grab your attention, what keeps it is Dean's delusional status. Told from the point of view of 5 characters (Dean, Bucella, Phillip, Ginny & Alice), all the characters weave in & out of each other's lives in a strange dance, searching for the meaning of life. Well, if not the meaning of life, searching for something more significant than what they have. Well, if you don't buy that metaphoric crap, then this is a search for God & sex. God & sex are pitted against each other, mistaken for each other, and viewed as means to one another. Some obsess on God's ways, while some abstain from God's ways. Some abstain from sex, some are reborn in sex. Some abstain from God & sex. Some believe the are The Savior because of sex. Some believe in math as The Savior, but have diaphragms anyway. The author has created the truly bizarre, but it's all plausible. It's epic & fantastic, yet each character is so rooted in some clinical state that you suddenly feel that it's all too real. It's sharp & biting, cruel when necessary, and while this certainly exposes the soft underbellies of the people, they retain if not dignity (and I must say, there may be indignant characters, there isn't much dignity!), some sense of respect or warmth, for Millet never goes in for the kill. Well, technically, since there is death, she does kill, but, oh what the hell -- this book is full of contradictions, humor & irony. Above all it's absolutely captivating. I picked it up, read it almost in one day -- and I was pissed when I had to stop. 'Everone's Pretty' is fast & furious reading that nearly hypnotizes. This is Lydia Millet's third book If it was inspired by her work at Larry Flynt Publications, I say give her a new job every 6 months, & let her write some more! (Condensed Review)