I've categorised this as a short story collection because that's how the frontispiece describes it. I think few of the pieces (some as short as 4 pages) can stand alone. I prefer to think of it as a novel.
Early in most chapters there are clues to the year (if only in the mentions of current films and albums) and the identity of the characters, but a crib would help - people change partners and orientation quickly, and people might share the same name. You don't know which of the swirling characters will recur, so you may need to keep a list.
The characters
I may well have missed some clues and cross-references, but here's a start
- Bruce, Robert, Lauren and Marshall are friends. Chapter 1's narrator is friends with Reynolds
- Anne, Eve and Faith are friends.
- Eve's daughter is Sheila.
- Faith's son is Dirk
- Ricky (Danny's friend) is murdered.
- Edward has a son called Danny
- Raymond, Graham, Dirk (Erikson?) and Tim are friends. Jamie died a year before Chapter 2
- Bryan and Nina are together. They have a son called Kenny
- Elena is married to Les Price. Their children are Tim + girls
- Cheryl was married to William. William then met Linda. Cheryl met Danny
- XXX is married to William and having an affair with Martin. Their children are Graham and Susan.
Chapter narrators
They're all first-person. I think that the action spans no more than a year or 2.
- 1982: Narrator is friend/lover of Bruce and Reynolds
- Narrator is Tim
- 1983: Narrator is XXX - one of William's wives; Graham's mother. She has a thing about young men, poolboys. Her shrink is Dr. Nova.
- Narrator is Les Price, on holiday with son Tim
- Narrator is Susan, on the way to the re-marriage of her father, William, to Cheryl.
- Narrator is Cheryl Laine, a news presenter separated from William. Current partner of Danny (19). Friends with Sheldon. She goes out, drugs up, misses the program she's supposed to anchor
- 1984: Narrator is Bryan Metro, a rockstar who abuses groupies. He's on tour in Japan with his agent Roger. They meet "The English Prices"
- 1983: Letters by Anne to Sean. Unrequited love. Anne meets Randy who ODs
- Narrator is Graham who's with Christie, Randy and Martin. Martin's helping Leon to make a video of "The English Prices". Graham's father (William?) dies
- Narrator is Jamie, a vampire. His shrink is Dr. Nova. Jamie's a friend of Dirk, a cannibal
- Narrator knows Peter and Mary, who've kidnapped a boy. The narrator kills him.
- Narrator, who's with a dying girl, knows Mona and Griffin. They're on a beach holiday together
- Narrator is with Bruce who's married to Grace who he's promised to leave for the narrator. During a zoo visit he tells the narrator he's an alien.
There's lots of valium, tumbleweed, tanned blondes, shared lovers, Wayfarers sunglasses and crossing of legs. LA features heavily - "I didn't recognize the signs that accompany an affair with a married man since basically in L.A. there aren't any" (p.258)
Sometimes the dialog is snappy. More often it's expansive. I liked "The Up Escalator", "In the Islands" and "Another Gray Area", though I thought they were rather long.
