I picked up this book because I’m an insane fan of the author’s epic “antasy” series of “Ghost Ant” novels. Even so I wasn’t sure because it is such a huge departure from that visionary trilogy – but “A Bitch For God” proved every bit as engaging, entertaining, and – ultimately – even more emotionally affecting.
Indeed, as vastly different as the books are, they share the same intrinsic DNA – the author’s loathing of self-serving demagogues who would use spirituality to exploit and defraud others.
Along the way, we are treated to a bittersweet – and often very funny and affectionate – right-of-passage set in LA/Hollywood in the 1980s, as the survivors of the AIDS disaster grapple with their futures when the “anything goes” era comes crashing to its end.
“A Bitch For God” also shares DNA with another enduring literary genre: the odyssey of the Hollywood hanger-on, as so brilliantly evoked by writers as diverse as Nathanael West, Charles Bukowski, Steve Erickson, Eve Babitz, Bret Easton Ellis and so many more. In fact, certain passages within “A Bitch” – particularly one truly surreal episode involving a parade float – would have been right at home in the pages of “The Day of the Locust.”
The set-up, in brief: In 1980s Hollywood, aspiring (read: broke) screenwriter Tyler finesses his talent for cooking into a job at “Manna From Heaven,” a grass-roots outfit that makes food for desperately-ill HIV/AIDS patients. Tyler is a young gay man who has seen too many friends die, so he devotes himself to this new-found purpose just as the outbreak spikes and the need soars. But Tyler’s sense of mission – and the mission of “Manna” itself – is soon thrown into chaos by the charity’s leader: New Age prophetess and self-dealing guru Lakshmi Steinmetz, whose voracious pursuit of Hollywood celebrity threatens to destroy the whole undertaking.
It's this depiction of Lakshmi that is dominates the narrative – and makes the novel so timely, in fact. Her character emerges as a charismatic gorgon, a New Age wrecking-ball whose volatile grandiosity and forensic score-keeping mask her terror of being exposed as the fraud she is. It’s a towering portrayal of human weakness – of rampaging ego, bottomless greed, incessant lies, and a desperate and undying pursuit of fame. Reader beware – because we are still at the mercy of these parasitic frauds!
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