Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore: A Novel

by Walter Mosley Narrated by Bahni Turpin

Overview

In this scorching, mournful, often explicit, and never less than moving literary novel by the famed creator of the Easy Rawlins series, Debbie Dare, a black porn queen, has to come to terms with her sordid life in the adult entertainment industry after her tomcatting husband dies in a hot tub. Electrocuted. With another woman in there with him. Debbie decides she just isn't going to "do it anymore." But executing her exit strategy from the porn world is a wrenching and far from simple process.

Millions of men (and no doubt many women) have watched famed black porn queen Debbie Dare-she of the blond wig and blue contacts-"do it" on television and computer screens every which way with every combination of partners the mind of man can imagine. But one day an unexpected and thunderous on-set orgasm catches Debbie unawares, and when she returns to the mansion she shares with her husband, insatiable former porn star and "film producer" Theon Pinkney, she discovers that he's died in a case of hot tub electrocution, "auditioning" an aspiring "starlet." Burdened with massive debts that her husband incurred, and which various L.A. heavies want to collect on, Debbie must reckon with a life spent in the peculiar subculture of the pornography industry and her estrangement from her family and the child she had to give up. She's done with porn, but her options for what might come next include the possibility of suicide. Debbie . . . is a portrait of a ransacked but resilient soul in search of salvation and a cure for grief.

Editorial Reviews

MAY 2014 - AudioFile

Narrator Bahni Turpin delivers an entertaining portrayal of Debbie Dare, 31-year-old porn star extraordinaire. This humorous yet sensitive novel features a woman who is learning to cope after the death of her husband, a former porn star. Turpin’s voice is bold and precise. She sounds curt at times but can be glib as well, especially when speaking to those demanding payment for her husband’s debts. Listening to Turpin is like watching a staged performance of Debbie’s unfolding world as she copes with family traumas, attempts to leave the pornography industry, and tries to ward off feelings of suicide. Turpin takes command of the prose, whether Debbie is being intuitive or cerebral about the life she wants to live. She delivers an absolutely engaging narration. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

03/17/2014
A pornographic actress, Debbie Dare, comes to terms with her past after her husband’s death, in Mosely’s shocking but ultimately flat 43rd book. Here, the author forgoes the well-plotted mystery genre he’s staked his name on; his latest novel finds its intrigue in the profession of its well-developed main character. Fully realized and sympathetic, Debbie is among Mosely’s best creations to date, due to a well-wrought first-person perspective and snap-tight dialogue. She navigates an L.A. landscape fleshed out with bizarre characters, from porn producers and a mafia hit man to the mother of her deceased husband, who help her distinguish her identity from her on-screen persona. While Debbie is an elemental creation in Mosely’s canon, a strong female character with an impeccable voice, the book itself is slow paced, with an unsatisfying climax. Perhaps in a sequel, the author will find the right book in which to place his new heroine. (May)

From the Publisher

Praise for DEBBIE DOESN'T DO IT ANYMORE:

"This could be the best thing Mosley has written in years, a deeply affecting story of a woman whose determination to pull herself out of one life and into another is tested almost to its limits by things she can't control—until she finds a way to control them...[Mosley is] back at the top of his game here."
—Booklist, starred review

"The premise is jarring, yet Mosley is able to pain a picture of ordinary people. He shows the humanity of the characters despite their flaws."
—Library Journal

Library Journal

03/15/2014
Winner of PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award and famous for his best-selling historical mysteries starring hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, Mosley returns with an ambitious and intriguing novel about how we act in challenging situations. Black porn star Debbie Dare, who typically wears a blonde wig and blue contacts, arrives home to find the electrocuted body of husband Theon in the hot tub with an underage girl who is just a little older than Debbie was when she met him. In the following days, she takes care of her husband's affairs, connects with his mother, and chooses a different profession. The premise is jarring, yet Mosley is able to paint a picture of ordinary people. He shows the humanity of the characters despite their flaws: "I loved Theon in my sleep that night," says Debbie. "He was an ideal husband, a man who took care of so many people and things that he didn't have time for children—or even a proper job." VERDICT Like Eric Jerome Dickey's Genevieve, this book will appeal to readers who like their erotic fiction with a little depth. [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/13.]—Ashanti White, Yelm, WA

MAY 2014 - AudioFile

Narrator Bahni Turpin delivers an entertaining portrayal of Debbie Dare, 31-year-old porn star extraordinaire. This humorous yet sensitive novel features a woman who is learning to cope after the death of her husband, a former porn star. Turpin’s voice is bold and precise. She sounds curt at times but can be glib as well, especially when speaking to those demanding payment for her husband’s debts. Listening to Turpin is like watching a staged performance of Debbie’s unfolding world as she copes with family traumas, attempts to leave the pornography industry, and tries to ward off feelings of suicide. Turpin takes command of the prose, whether Debbie is being intuitive or cerebral about the life she wants to live. She delivers an absolutely engaging narration. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2014-02-02
A porn star experiences an epiphany of sorts in the wake of her husband's death. Prolific novelist Mosley (Little Green, 2013, etc.) fielded his fair share of criticism for his X-rated one-two punch of Killing Johnny Fry (2006) and Diablerie (2007), and readers attracted to the equally explicit nature of this novel might be expecting more of the same. In truth, readers are likely to be more surprised by the depth of protagonist Sandra Peel, whom the author treats with tremendous compassion. Of course, when we first meet Sandra, she's in the guise of Debbie Dare, an ivory-haired, black pornographic film star who, in the midst of a typical scene, experiences a rare and revelatory orgasm, causing her to pass out. She returns home to find that her husband, fellow porn-film actor and part-time pimp Theon Pinkney, has accidentally electrocuted himself and a 16-year-old runaway in a hot tub during a sex act. The book then follows the well-read and resolute woman through the next week or so as she tries to sort out her husband's funeral, avoid the mobsters who want her to pay her dead husband's debts, figure out a way to quit the business, reconnect with friends and family, and listen to the whisper of suicide sailing behind her cold eyes. Except for flashbacks and the novel's opening scene, there's not even any sex for the determined exile-to-be. "Thousands of us boys and girls had run screaming from the same filth and stink of poverty," she says. "Black and white and brown and yellow and red had put out their thumbs and pulled down their pants, used lubricants and drugs and alcohol to escape these decaying ancestors and others just like them." Mosley's characteristically well-crafted cast also includes a kind police detective, a nonjudgmental shrink and a shy young architect with a crush on the non-glammed-out Sandra. A well-told redemption song about the most unlikely of heroines.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169941234
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	05/13/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged

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