Loading...
74th out of 87 books
—
111 voters
My rating:
add to my books
Sick City
by
Tony O'Neill
Meet Jeffrey and Randal, two desperate junkies and your guides on this top-to-bottom fun-house tour of Hollywood's underbelly. From infamous crime scenes to celebrity treatment centers, "Sick City" is an outrageous page-turning adventure set in the sun-bleached wilds of LA.
Paperback, 374 pages
Published
August 1st 2010
by Harper Perennial
(first published July 14th 2010)
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
247)
Jeffrey is a virtual nobody, and is needing to get clean for his own reasons. Randal is a scion of a wealthy Hollywood family, and is having an intervention shoved on him by his exasperated family. Both of them have “chosen” to undergo rehab with Dr. Mike – a questionable television personality - and a quirk of fate puts both men in the same room.
But there's a plan afoot. It seems that Jeffrey’s dead lover, once a high-ranking police detective, confiscated a homemade sex movie starri...more
But there's a plan afoot. It seems that Jeffrey’s dead lover, once a high-ranking police detective, confiscated a homemade sex movie starri...more
When it becomes old hat and it feels normal to read fiction in which all of the main characters are junkies or addicts of some sort I am guessing it's time to reevaluate my reading material. But I really like Tony O'Neill's writing style. This was much better written than Down and Out on Murder Mile. It's tough material to stomach in a lot of parts. Addicts, violent murders, drug wars, porn (lots of porn), sex, weird sex, gay sex. So if you don't like that kind of heat, stay out of Tony O'Neill'...more
Page-turner galore! There is nothing better then to sit down in the backyard and read about people who are worst off then the reader. Tony O'Neill has a great understanding of the narcotic world, and he uses that knowledge to write a thriller of sorts - or a plot driven by characters we care about. It's classic noir country and he uses Los Angeles as a character in the narrative.
As the novel goes on things get worse, strange connections between individuals are made and lost, an...more
As the novel goes on things get worse, strange connections between individuals are made and lost, an...more
you begin with an easy introduction into this journey. the chapters jump around from character to character. allowing you to distinctly connect and analyze each one personally. disturbing and interesting. it's a new book that touches on real people and current events. the names are changed, but you can figure out who tony o'neill is really writing about here. a good example of the ugly truths and depths drug addicts must steep to. the book doesn't make me want to live in l.a. it does make me wan...more
I thought this book was friggin' awesome, and would highly recommend it. You find yourself rooting hard for Jeffrey and Randal, even though their background, moral value system, and actions on their own are often reprehensible. What the back of the cover won't tell you, is that this story is mainly about 4 people and not 2. Pat and Trina I hated, but they were essential to the storyline, and I think became part of the reason I pulled so hard for Jeffrey and Randal. Dr. Mike represented everythin...more
underbelly dwellers and mayhem in LA. parts of this book detailing drug consumption is hard to take but for the most part it is a down and dirty caper of junkies, LA studio elite, rehabs and wink wink Hollywood play. it reads super fast like candy and the characters, though not very sympathetic, are an interesting crew. I especially liked 'black sheep' of a Hollywood scion family, Stevie Rox, who spoke with an affected english accent and got a new liver in south america 'where money still talk...more
I already knew that Tony O'Neill had an amazing talent at capturing the essence of junkies and urban rejects from his autobiographical novel Down and Out on Murder Mile but DAMN!. His first totally fictional novel Sick City is a whirlpool of drugs, sex, and badly planned schemes that sucks its protagonists deeper and deeper. It is hard to think of any writer who can write with so much feeling and empathy for the dregs of the city and his depictions of the darker neighborhoods of Hollywood and LA...more
O'Neill's 2nd novel is better than his first and quite a bit funnier too. The plot circles around drugs again but this time there's also a rare porn film involved (involving Sharon Tate and other stars). The whole subplot with Dr. Mike (a thinly veiled Dr. Drew character) and his affair with a junkie transsexual is especially delicious. O'Neill read at Powell's recently and it was one of the best readings I've been to in a long time.
Met the author at BEA and he's a doll. Book moves kind of slow at first getting to know all the characters and POVs and waiting for stories to collide, but the middle moves fast and gets interesting and culminates in a non-storybook warm/fuzzy ending. The author has a good sense of humor and I'm interested in reading more from him.
view 2 comments
Wow! I cannot imagine a person not having lived through addiction being able to write such an insightful (and yet macabre) story. I was sucked in from page 1. I'm off to order his next book on my Kindle (don't want to wait 'til the library opens back up on January 2nd). This was a very fast read (a few hours) because I couldn't take my eyes off the pages!
i read it quickly. That is the best part of the book. Total cliche characters, o.k. plot for a druggie adventure book, not much to it. i will be reading Digging the Vein just in case this was a poor representation of his work. i hope it was.
this book was completely epic. it kept me enthralled from the very first paragraph all the way to the very last page.
I really did hate it.
The book just idolized the junkie lifestyle.
The book just idolized the junkie lifestyle.
Yuck. Don't waste your time.
A wonderful novel.
wow.
Erica
added it
Normally, despite my love of drug-related reality tv (i.e. intervention), I can't stand drug books. Luckily, even though the main characters are all drug addicts, sick city isn't really a "drug" book. there's no endless descriptions of shooting up or eyes glazing over or anything like that. it's more of an "L.A." book than a drug book. to sum it up in one sentence, it's the story of two junkies who try to sell a secret sharon tate sex tape, and it's just fun and gritty but no...more
I felt like I needed a shower after reading this book. Some kind of drug and sex hell.
I just started reading this book. The characters are keeping me hooked. I'm on Chapter 6. A handful of characters have been introduced. My favorite characters so far are definitely Jeffrey and his friend Tyler. I love how they are gay characters, but aren't--at least not yet--pigeonholed into a gay stereotype. The characters are fresh, politically incorrect, and completely irreverent. I love it.
A great read! Having some knowledge of that lifestyle I can readily identify with it (and not cause my name is Randall too!).
Weird. I spent too much time picturing the characters as real people in Hollywood, but definitely different from anything I've read in a long time.
Shandra
rated it
Not usually a book that I would pickup, but what fun I had reading it. I will read more from the Author in the future!!!
oh Tony, what would the world do without writing quite like yours?
Good, sick stuff. Lots of drugs, sex, sleaze, violence
I'm pretty sure that one day I'll flip on IFC and there will be an indie film adaptation of this book. People will call it an LA Trainspotting and they won't be that off the mark.
incredibly fun trash
Captivatiing, fascinasting, reAL story of drug induced activities including violence,betrayal.Tainted with bits of reality I could not put this book down.
Melissa
marked it as to-read
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
