The Loser's Club: Complete Restored Edition
Richard Perez
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Buy *The Loser's Club: Complete Restored Edition* online

The Loser's Club: Complete Restored Edition

Richard Perez
Ludlow Press
Paperback
304 pages
May 2005
rated 3 1/2 of 5 possible stars
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If the title doesn't summarize for you the station most of us feel we ordinarily occupy, than you're either so egocentric as not to even care what anyone else thinks about you or you're such an incredible social miscreant about whom no one cares at all. Period. The specific placement of the apostrophe in the book's moniker is implying that we all belong, that this organization isn't simple the sole domain of the character/s inhabiting these pages.

In essence, this is about the adventures, mishaps, misfortunes, and missed opportunities every creature with red blood has, at one time in her/life, experienced. It is Martin Sierra's world on whom we focus, and though he possesses most of the necessities any male requires in making contact with the opposite species - a voice, any job, and the sheer chutzpah to put himself out there - he ultimately ends up empty.

The love of his life and the first woman he met through the imperious personal ads is Nikki, his main chica and the sole amore of his life. There's only one slight problem - the irenic Nikki is suffering through a vague personal identity crisis and, at the moment Sierra is trying to infuse himself into her life, she's spending bedtime with another lady.

This is a tale of the ups and downs we all face in meeting someone - and not just anyone, SOMEONE. To his credit, our main character puts himself out there, meeting women at bars and clubs and trying to regain the balance he can't quite seem to find when he realizes that Nikki is really not an option.

The book's main problem is the author's attempt at trying to be just a little too hip, a little too inside-thinking for the rest of us normal thinking humans. His descriptions of patrons at bars sounds like bad Star Wars dialogue: "It was a freak scene: queens, kings, club kids, B-list models, downtown trendies, ravers ... feet stomping, hips shimmying, asses shaking; glowing cigarettes dipping and rising in the dark." It is just too on the money. Had he given us a bit more to chew on, fewer pieces so that the reader might fill in his/her own vision of what hell a club scene truly is, the book may have been more moving. It is exactly as you'd picture it, and nobody wants to know the ending before reading the book.

But this is a fun and engaging ride. For anyone who has suffered the indignities of actually placing an ad in a personals paper, you'll understand this one. In fact, anyone who's ever been in love, looking or love, hoping for it, dying for it, or dreaming about it, will find something here.

One of the few instances where too much wit - too many bopping characters, too many models, too many imaginable situations - detracted from a book that could have truly provided the dark yet definitive side of the battle of the sexes.



Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Steven Rosen, 2005

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