Peter: An (A)Historical Romance
$18
An orphaned child of privilege, Peter enjoys a snug L.A. existance full of thing -- to eat, to wear, and to play with. But his world is rocked when he meets a yound Palestinian woman, Reham, who claims to be Peter's half-sister. DeShell's excessive, digressive opera of objects follows these two to Istanbul, Jerusalem, and Gaza City, teetering on the razor's edge between obsession and rejection, fascination and disgust.
"Jeffrey DeShell's high-octane rewrite of Melville's classic Pierre sweeps the reader from 'the 'tightish pale cotton tees (Marc Ribot $45)' of L.A. to the 'complex bouquet of dust, worked lamb, rosemary, human sweat, oranges, jasmine, cooking lamb and charcoal' of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul to the 'chronic ambience of damage assimilated and endured (enduring)' of Gaza. By turns hilarious and harrowing, Peter is pure dynamite." Laird Hunt, author of The Impossibly
Praise - and public rebuke - for DeShell's previous fiction:
S&M
"One of the funniest, smartest, sexiest works of American fiction I have read
in a long time." Carole Maso, author of Break
Every Rule and Ava
"A stylistic and formal tour de force that manages at the same time to tell
an enormously entertaining story about sex and loss."
Jonathan Baumbach, author of On the Way to My Father's Funeral
"The real love story here is between [DeShell's] voice and language itself:
its rhythms, its sounds, its spill across the page."
Review of Contemporary Fiction
"We're concerned about the level of judgment that's been exercised by the
people responsible for its publication ... such materials are a violation
of what most people in Iowa would find prudent."
Rep. Kenneth Veenstra, R-Iowa, Chairman House Committee of Oversight and Investigation
In Heaven Everything is Fine
"DeShell's debut is provocative, compelling ... the author is his own psychosexual
and philosophical brat pack." Robert Steiner,
author of Dread
"As tender as it is smart." Lynne Tillman, author
of No Lease on Life and This is Not It