In Coney Island, Brooklyn, lonely widow Sarah Goldfarb wants nothing more than to lose weight and appear on a television game show. In her obsessive quest, she becomes addicted to diet pills, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and best friend, Tyrone, attempt to secure an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by selling heroin.
Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in a spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares.
"Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists . . . To understand Selby's work is to understand the anguish of America." —The New York Times Book Review
Hubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn and went to sea as a merchant marine while still in his teens. Laid low by lung disease, he was, after a decade of hospitalizations, written off as a goner and sent home to die. Deciding instead to live, but having no way to make a living, he came to a realization that would change the course of literature: "I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer." Drawing from the soul of his Brooklyn neighborhood, he began writing something called "The Queen Is D…
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