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79th out of 578 books
—
636 voters
Venus Envy
At thirty-five, Mary Frazier Armstrong, called "Frazier" by friends and enemies alike, is a sophisticated woman with a thriving art gallery, a healthy bank balance, and an enviable social position.In fact, she has everything to live for, but she's lying in a hospital bed with a morphine drip in her arm and a life expectancy measured in hours."Don't die a stranger," her ass...more
Paperback, 400 pages
Published
January 1st 1994
by Bantam
(first published 1993)
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Frazier is misdiagnosed with late-stage lung cancer, so she writes letters to her family members and closest friends telling them exactly what she thinks and also coming out of the closet to them. And what a mess ensues! Her hateful mother Libby's true colors come shining through, as do her brother Carter's wife Laura's. Thankfully, her pussy-whipped father Frank finally grows a spine and leaves Libby, and the philandering Carter leaves Laura (albeit for another woman). That could have all made...more
This book starts out very funny & engaging. The setting gives an amusing peek into the subculture of the moneyed classes in the racist & homophobic southern US. Nearly every character is a stranger to her or his own self, living out a societally proscribed façade of a life. Or heroine, after a brush with death, overturns the anthill of her repressed life & family, with hilarious results. Then around the middle, the somewhat heavy-handed but bearable polemic begins. It’s been over a d...more
This book is bad. I don't know what else to tell you. Venus Envy starts off so boring that you want to quit reading. GOOD NEWS IS that if you stick it out long enough to actually care about the characters, Rita Mae Brown punishes you by completely abandoning those characters and babbling about Greek mythology for ten chapters until the book ends. OK, that was actually bad news. I apologize.
I understood that this book is trying to tell you to be honest with people about who you are and what you...more
I understood that this book is trying to tell you to be honest with people about who you are and what you...more
Rita Mae Brown, what were you thinking?! I was actually pissed off when I finished this book. What started off as boring, manages to shift into total nonsense in the last six chapters.
The characters are just so exaggerated and the plot is pretty dumb, but mostly I was bored by the pages and pages of pointless details. Why do I need to know about every flower in your goddamn garden or every brush stroke in a painting? I don’t. CLEARLY that less is more idea missed Brown. The ending is just ridic...more
The characters are just so exaggerated and the plot is pretty dumb, but mostly I was bored by the pages and pages of pointless details. Why do I need to know about every flower in your goddamn garden or every brush stroke in a painting? I don’t. CLEARLY that less is more idea missed Brown. The ending is just ridic...more
I was kind of surprised how not good this book was. I mean... Rita Mae Brown! Setting aside the fact that the book hasn't aged well as far as the place of LBGTQ people in American society, it was still deeply flawed in spite of its promising premise. The characters were cardboard cutouts (especially the heroine's mother). It's full of little speeches put into various character's mouths that are all obviously coming from the writer. It's really preachy, and has some just plain WEIRD ideas about w...more
This is a very delightful, funny, and sexy read! Not to be missed! Wow! And the author is just gorgeous!
This was my third time thru the Venus Envy. After the first time, I immediately read it over again the second time. It's that kind of book.
My favorite part is that the God, Jupiter, has an organ the size of the Empire State Building; and when plays it, rainbows fill the sky.
One would have to say Venus Envy is pro-tolerance.
Here, out of the mouth of the Goddess Venus, Herself:
"The purpose of th...more
This was my third time thru the Venus Envy. After the first time, I immediately read it over again the second time. It's that kind of book.
My favorite part is that the God, Jupiter, has an organ the size of the Empire State Building; and when plays it, rainbows fill the sky.
One would have to say Venus Envy is pro-tolerance.
Here, out of the mouth of the Goddess Venus, Herself:
"The purpose of th...more
Fiction for fun here. The story takes place in well-to-do Virginia society. The protagonist, a successful art gallery owner, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. She writes a series of letters to closest friends and family, divulging her innermost feelings--and the fact that she is gay. She tells each exactly what she thinks of them and their influences on her life. Then the hospital discovers the misdiagnosis. She will live, and must set right the repercussions with her high society mother, drunk...more
A damning look at small-minded people in the South. I really enjoyed most of the book and was very interested in what was going to happen. Brown lost me at the end, though. The last section of the book takes a very strange twist that i couldn't get into. It's like Brown wanted to teach her main character a bunch of lessons and couldn't come up with any other way to do it in her allotted page limit set by a publisher. So she had to come up with a scenario that, to me, seemed like a total diversio...more
I've decided that even though Rita Mae Brown is a lesbian she also seems to be a misogynist and a really annoying proponent of southern democratic politics. The women in this book that she doesn't depict as sexually alluring are just plain evil. The men, poor ducks, are well meaning but unable to resist the feminine onslaught. The chapter on Greco-Roman gods and goddesses was pretty interesting, aside from the fact that she doubles down on her misogyny in regards to Juno. Not recommended.
In this book, the writer tackles homophobia, racism, snobbery, and the false lives of her elite wealthy circle. I read this many years ago in paperback, and now re-read this as an e-book. The main character, Frazier, is re-examing her life after a misdiagnosed fatal illness, and we see how this affects all those close to her. This book was at times funny, and other times irritating with its preachy tolerance tone. Still, this book does not seemed to have aged and the topics are just as valid tod...more
When I was 11, my sisters were reading this book and I remember them laughing hysterically. I wanted to read it when they were done, but they told me I couldn't. This was the first and only book that was ever censored for me, so I never forgot about it. I was always curious, but too embarrassed to look it up because I thought it must be super racy if they wouldn't let me read it. Finally I read it and I was pretty disappointed. I didn't expect it to be the best book I ever read, but I at least t...more
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Shit, I had certainly heard of the author through reading feminist books, so when I saw this at Goodwill, I picked it up.
Apparently everyone but me knew she wasn't a rablle-rouser anymore and this book is absurd. Greek Gods come to earth to teach a single professional woman how to get it on, as it were. Thanks for wasting my time, Rita.
Apparently everyone but me knew she wasn't a rablle-rouser anymore and this book is absurd. Greek Gods come to earth to teach a single professional woman how to get it on, as it were. Thanks for wasting my time, Rita.
i found this book to laugh a loud funny! the premise is that a woman named fraiser is told she has a few days left to live...cancer and all and her business partner tells her to write letters to her family and dear friends and tell them what she thinks and feels. Fraiser goes all out with the letters and tells everyone what she thinks about them and that she is gay, a fact she had been hiding for years. Then the doctor comes back and says that they had the wrong chart and Fraiser will live after...more
I sort of wanted this to be a romp through the chaos that telling secrets can bring, and it never really was that. I expected to be driven along in an open-top car at full speed, with the wind in my hair, giggling at the scenery, but instead I was pulled along in a cart by one grumpy donkey. Also any book that describes sex with phrases like "hot pink vagina" and "instrument of love" does not tend to light my fire. Unless it's meant to be funny. Which I don't THINK this is.
"Laura opted for the tiny cruelties: the cold looks, the acid comments away from other female ears. In public she placed her hand on her husband's forearm and smiled brightly. One would almost have thought she was a political wife, but then perhaps all wives were political." 190
It was touching at times, but also pretty boring at times. I think sometimes she focused more on innocuous details than the plot line of the story. Also, the whole Greek gods come to life to give advice part? The whole time I was thinking, "Why the hell is this here?!"
this book was a surprise and one grabbed off the shelf in desperation as I had nothing else to read that night. :). I liked it way more than I thought I would, but the last few chapters were bizarre and threw me for a loop, which was sort of annoying.
Another classic lesbian fiction book that I read as a young lesbian. The plot is great. I love the tension created by the lesbian in the genteel South. However, I wasn't a huge fan of the fantasy section about the Greek gods.
I loved this story. What would your life be like if you told everyone what you really thought about them and their choices in life?? Plus, her writing always makes me wish I lived in that part of the US (Richmond-ish).
I like this book, the lead character does something I think we all should do. Be honest with each other about ourselves, and it shouldn't be brought about by the threat of death!!
This is not Brown's best work, in my opinion, but a good read.
This is not Brown's best work, in my opinion, but a good read.
Aug 03, 2011
Jaquilyn
added it
Well this was fun, I'll say that much...it was meaningful as well though. This book is not only a great time and pretty sexual...it's insightful. I would definitely re this one again.
This was a delightful fantasy-type romantic novel. It was very contemporary. I enjoyed it and found myself laughing out loud frequently. I read it in one day, because I couldn't put it down!
One of my favorite books of all time. RMB's setting for all her books post-Rubyfruit Jungle, rich southerners, is blah take-it-or-leave-it for me. I don't read any other author using that setting. But it doesn't matter. The setting is just a convenience for her complete upheaval and setting-to-rights of the whole social universe, and in this book, the universe itself. Bravo! is all I can say. My experience of life is that there are plenty of real people just as poisonous as the bad guys in this...more
An amusing little story with repercussions felt across life in a small(ish) southern burg of Charlottesville, VA. There's probably a lesson in here for all of us.
Feb 27, 2009
Angela
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to Angela by:
I wanted to read one of Brown's books after coming across review
Shelves:
rita-mae-brown
This is the first book I have read by Brown. The first half of the book I found to be an entertaining & funny read. However the story slowed down after that & I did not find the second half to be anywhere close to as entertaining as the first. Overall it was a quick read & at least half was entertaining.
What will you do if you get told you will, well you go out and get out of the closet!!! Funny part is the hero of story is going to live. A very fun story!
One of our most-hated book group choices. Oddly, it was our first book. I think Rita probably has some better books out there.
I cannot rate this low enough! I hate giving it even one star. This book barely deserves the energy I am expending writing this review, but I write it to warn fellow readers to stay clear and not waste their time! Perhaps the absolute worst book I have ever read in my life, and that is saying a lot.
There is no point, the characters are faceless, meaningless, one-dimensional, and near-cliches. The themes are distracting and the story is outdated ... Maybe if it was better written I could get past...more
There is no point, the characters are faceless, meaningless, one-dimensional, and near-cliches. The themes are distracting and the story is outdated ... Maybe if it was better written I could get past...more
This book had its moments of good story telling, separated by periods of straight sex.
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Rita Mae Brown is a prolific American writer, most known for her mysteries and other novels (Rubyfruit Jungle). She is also an Emmy-nominated screenwriter.
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“He unzipped his pants and his brains fell out.”
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Mar 20, 2012 11:42pm