John O'Brien
Grove Press, 1990

This is the profoundly disturbing novel that inspired the Academy Award-winning movie. John O'Brien plunges his characters into the grotesque, neon-lit, liquor-fueled world of Las Vegas, a world of naked desperation, broken dreams, and uninhibited carnality.

Sera is a prostitute, managing better than most to make it, at least to her way of thinking, working the streets, bars and hotels of Vegas, though regularly degraded and brutalized by her customers. Ben is an alcoholic, whose life is speeding into oblivion at a terrifying rate, who decides to drink himself to death. Finding in each other the easy familiarity of truly kindred spirits, they fall in love.

Unfortunately the redemptive power of their love is not enough to save them. She can not stop him from drowning himself in a sea of bourbon and vodka, and he can not stop her from selling herself on the streets. This is a love story stripped bare of the mystique and romantic pretense; what remains is an ugly truth, a bleak, nihilistic puzzle to ponder; a love story for the 90's.

John O'Brien died in 1994 by his own hand. It has been said that this novel was his suicide note. Leaving Las Vegas is a devastating literary experience.