cover image Dead Glamorous: The Autobiography of Seduction and Self-Destruction

Dead Glamorous: The Autobiography of Seduction and Self-Destruction

Carole Morin. Overlook Press, $23.95 (190pp) ISBN 978-0-87951-750-2

Humor is unpredictable. Like wine, sometimes it travels well, sometimes not. Morin, author of Lampshades, a columnist for the New Statesman and a minor cult figure in England, has written a self-conscious autobiography that is a wacky cross between Monty Python and the National Enquirer. Her writing is an acquired taste. At the heart of this picaresque journey is her relationship with Maddie, her joyously vulgar, unexpectedly rich mother who is herself surrounded by her six wildly caricatured sisters. An accompanying theme is the suicide of the author's brother John, who at 26 jumped to his death from the roof of a building owned by their grandfather. Despite the occasional flashes of outrageous camp, it is hard for the uninitiated reader to know whether to laugh or cry. There is a harsh note of desperation behind the relentless self-satire that, finally, becomes painful. An odd book, unlikely to gather much of a following in the U.S. (Feb.)