cover image Live Fast Die Hot

Live Fast Die Hot

Jenny Mollen. Doubleday, $25.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-385-54069-8

Mollen’s second effort to show readers glimpses of her life, after her essay collection, I Like You Just the Way I Am, is by turns endearing and off-putting. Mollen, the wife of actor Jason Biggs, describes her dizzying life, which includes taking ecstasy while pregnant and offering her husband a threesome to spice up a date night. When her son, Sid, is born, she writes a beautiful paragraph about holding him for the first time—”I wasn’t ready for kids. I was just ready for him”—and promises the reader that this love for Sid would be her impetus to grow up. But the spirit that animated earlier adventures isn’t fully tamed. She goes ghost hunting in her own house and travels to Morocco to meet the people who made a rug she bought. There’s an off-putting showmanship to her storytelling, a sort of breathless look-what-I-did, but fans of her earlier work should enjoy this book. (June)