Starlite Terrace (Hardbound - 2012)

In a rundown Los Angeles apartment building the titular Starlite Terrace Patrick Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roth s dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation.In The Man at Noah s Window, Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in "High Noon." In Eclipse of the Sun, Moss, who lives in fear of the next holocaust, awaits a visit from the long-lost daughter he has tracked down. In Rider on the Storm, Gary, a rock drummer and born-again Christian, who almost played on the Turtles 60s-hit Happy Together, strives to find escape from his personal guilt. And in The Woman in the Sea of Stars, June, a former Hollywood studio secretary whose husband once cheated on her with Marilyn Monroe, makes the best of a disconnected life until she emerges reborn through ashes strewn in the illuminated swimming pool of the Starlite Terrace.In each of these four tales of wanna-bes and almost-weres, Roth's L.A. portraits unfold in rare style, and, in Krishna Winston s masterful translation, the hopeless, loveless perversion of an Ed Ruscha-inspired California becomes a compelling pageant of all-American grotesques that is not to be missed."