The Diary of an Idiot

I'm still here after 16 years, and still chuckle when I think of her book.

Especially about the crackhead living downstairs with the little boys she still lives here too, unfortunately. A great read from a beautiful, talented, woman. Too bad no one bought the movie rights. Her apartment has since been renovated and is now renting for double what she was paying!

Favorite book, one of my favorite writers! Book came in perfect condition. I have read this book several times and recommended so much that I loaned it out and never got it back.

What a great read. One person found this helpful. Makes me glad I splurged and bought myself the prime membership. Product received in timely fashion and quality as promised. I was surprised when I came to shelve this in my library to find the horse-based mystery novel "Flamethrower" next to it and to realize that it was by the same author. The heroine of the Rudy Murphy series is fond of horses and is a reformed alky, but this book is very different This is memoir of drug addiction and of sex, both in many and varied forms.

It is brilliantly written but essentially plotless.

It is presented as fiction but does not really work as a novel. There is a parade of highly eccentric characters who appear and disappear from the narrator's life almost at random. By staying entirely inside the head of the narrator she misses out on the reactions and feelings of all the concerned people who were trying to help her. By disclaiming autobiography she misses out on giving us insight into the reasons for her relapses and recovery.

Is she really telling us what it is like to be a homeless panhandler? She has a wonderful sense of humor, and that can be a handicap achieving insight into motives.

At times she makes heroin addiction sound like fun. I think I'll wait for the next Ruby Murphy.

Maggie Estep is the glorious soul-baring barker of this sideshow, inviting you to look behind the curtain of Emotional Idiocy. Maggie is cool and hip and striking in this first literary effort. If you want pretention, look elsewhere. She is a self-described emotional idiot. The chapters alternate between her life as a child, growing up with a father who was shattered in a parachuting accident turned horse trainer, and her life as an adult, where she writes smut and answers the phone for dominatrixes because she only possesses a touch of sadism.

The book cycles between different examples of sex and addiction. Zoey relates her representations of sex as a Catholic school-girl to her career as a pornographer.

Her first kiss at age twelve, sweaty and struggling on the floor of a school bus on the return trip from summer camp, is a precursor to her messy, chaotic relationships with men as an adult. The novel never dips into the saccharine realm of compassion or redemption. Instead Estep portrays emotional idiots with deadpan honesty. Estep strips her characters of all defenses, so that by the end of the novel, the reader finds that they have been stripped as well. The ending of the book was very unsatisfying.

I felt as though I was just getting to know the characters and it was over.

KIRKUS REVIEW

Melanie marked it as to-read Oct 08, Mike Cavosie marked it as to-read Aug 10, Carla Harper marked it as to-read Aug 12, There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Books by David Wills. Trivia About The Diary of an I No trivia or quizzes yet. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account.