cover image Hollow Mountains

Hollow Mountains

Viggiani. Epimetheus Press, $15.95 (249pp) ISBN 978-0-88008-048-4

Nina is a stripper-exotic dancer. Gus is her sleazeball boyfriend who lives off the money she earns turning tricks. He's addicted to heroin; she shoots up whenever he isn't being too stingy with his stash. Gus also beats Nina, abuses her, is rude, lazy, selfish and arrogant. Nina's mom, Angela, is similarly obnoxious, and so is Nina's Uncle Waldo, a big New York attorney who reads Great Books, and who raped Nina when she was eight. And finally, there's Amraphel, a dealer Gus bought some especially good heroin from and to whom Gus gives a machine gun and Nina. Amraphel takes something of a raincheck on Nina, but later, when Nina and Gus rob and kill an old woman in their building, Nina hides out at Amraphel's house in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. There, Nina learns many wondrous things from Amraphel concerning the true nature of human beings and the universe. This story, by the author of In a Pig's Eye, is implausible and unbelievable, the characters poorly drawn, the narrative verbose, and the action is consistently (and needlessly) brutal, with many scenes of graphic violence. (December 10)