Life Is Hot in Cracktown Book

With echoes of Richard Price's Clockers, Life is Hot in Cracktown paints a realistic and disturbing picture of life on the edge in New York's drug-infested neighborhoods. It's a world of drug addicts, pimps, prostitutes, transsexuals, low-life criminals and the homeless, all caught in the deadly orbit of crack. In "Miss Lonely Has a Date Tonight," a call girl's night on the town includes giving sexual favors to a brutal chauffeur in exchange for a few hits of crack, a client with a penchant for handcuffs and "that look in his eye," and a final drop-off, not on her doorstep, but in the Hudson River. "School's Out" tells the story of ten-year-old Willy, living in a drug-infested hotel, begging for money for food, learning to smoke crack, being introduced to sex by a much older woman, and falling in love with Melody, a twelve-year-old prostitute who disappears. And in "Homos off Houston," Marybeth, a transsexual, achieves a kind of grace through her commitment to her crack-addicted husband, Benny, who may or may not have AIDS. Not since Last Exit to Brooklyn has there been a book as shocking and emotionally riveting as Life is Hot in Cracktown. The landscape is dangerous and compelling, and the insight with which Giovinazzo stakes out his territory makes this an important and impressive work of original fiction.

Publishers Weekly

Giovinazzo's debut collection of short fiction purports to tell real stories of the crack-ridden inner-city streets, but their combined effect is to repel rather than reveal. Of his 16 tales, all previously unpublished, not one has any but the crudest plotting, scene-building or characterization. In a typical story, ``Miss Lonely Has a Date Tonight,'' a prostitute has sex with her pimp's chauffeur in exchange for a few hits of crack; after suffering rape and physical abuse, she is brutally murdered. In another, ``Londa Fries Her Egg,'' a pregnant crack addict is beaten savagely by her father until she aborts her fetus. Scatological, crudely written and relentlessly sordid, these tales are only for readers stronger in stomach than in discrimination. (Aug.)