The Diary Of An Emotional Idiot: A Novel

(Paperback)

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Description

The novel tells the story of Zoey, a smut writer and receptionist at a dungeon in New York City. She is a self-described "emotional idiot." The chapters alternate between her life as a child, growing up with a father who was shattered in a parachuting accident turned horse trainer, and her life as an adult, where she writes smut and answers the phone for dominatrixes because she only possesses "a touch of sadism." The book cycles between different examples of sex and addiction. Zoey relates her representations of sex as a Catholic school-girl to her career as a pornographer. Her first kiss at age twelve, sweaty and struggling on the floor of a school bus on the return trip from summer camp, is a precursor to her messy, chaotic relationships with men as an adult. The novel never dips into the saccharine realm of compassion or redemption. Instead Estep portrays "emotional idiots" with deadpan honesty. Estep strips her characters of all defenses, so that by the end of the novel, the reader finds that they have been stripped as well.

Reviews

"Diary of an Emotional Idiot "is a coming-of-age novel as it might be trod by steel-toed boots and slippled by hypodermics; it's a roman a clef featuring sex and chains, same-sex sex, sex in rehabs, and ridiculously compulsive abuse of multiple partners; it's a primitive, joyous mess of a cartoon book about! the way some people live now, and it should infuriate nine out of ten lovers of heartfelt, carefully wrought novels about rural life. Be in on the controversy."

Author Bio

Maggie Estep is a noted spoken word artist. Estep has published seven books, Diary of an Emotional Idiot, Soft Maniacs, Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals, Hex, Gargantuan, Flamethrower, and Alice Fantastic. Hex, the first book in Maggie's trilogy of crime novels, was chosen by The New York Times as a notable book of 2003. Estep has also recorded two spoken word CD's, No More Mr Nice Girl and Love Is a Dog from Hell. She has given readings of her work at cafes, clubs, and colleges throughout the US and Europe and has also performed her work on "The Charlie Rose Show," MTV, PBS, and HBO's "Def Poetry Jam". Her writing has appeared in The New York Post, Self Magazine, Village Voice, New York Press, Harpers Bazaar, Spin, and Nerve, as well as in dozens of anthologies. She lives in upstate New York.