Hating Olivia: A Love Story

by Mark SaFranko

Overview

“A book of quiet horrors and beautifully expressed longing. . . . SaFranko’s prose is precise, flawless, and the work of a man who truly loves and understands great writing.” —Tony O'Neill, author of Sick City and Down and Out on Murder Mile

“SaFranko writes from the heart, and the balls, crafting a furious and passionate piece of work that is entirely his own, with some scenes that would make even Bukowski blush.” —Susan Tomaselli, editor of Dogmatika.com

Hating Olivia is acclaimed underground author Mark SaFranko’s darkly twisted story of two people’s descent into sex, obsession, and mutual destruction. A gritty confessional tale, Hating Olivia is sure to appeal to fans of Charles Bukowski, John Fante, and Huburt Selby, Jr.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061979194
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/16/2010
Series:	P.S. Series
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	8.24(w) x 11.68(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Mark SaFranko is an American author, playwright, artist, and musician. He was cited in The Best American Mystery Stories 2000 and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. He is the author of five published novels—Hating Olivia, Lounge Lizard, God Bless America, Hopler's Statement, and The Favor—and has written dozens more. He lives with his wife and son in New Jersey.

What People are Saying About This

Mary Dearborn

Hating Olivia is a remarkable tale of obsession and lust, a stunning portrait of a dangerously alienated hero masterfully told. You will not be able to put it down.”

Tony O'Neill

“... a book of quiet horrors and beautifully expressed longing... SaFranko’s prose is precise, flawless and the work of a man who truly loves and understands great writing.”

Susan Tomaselli

“SaFranko writes from the heart, and the balls, crafting a furious and passionate piece of work that is entirely his own, with some scenes that would make even Bukowski blush.”

Mike Ferraro

“Throughout Hating Olivia, SaFranko shows his versatility and skill as a writer by making something supremely difficult look easy as hell.”

Dan Fante

“Hating Olivia is the kind of book - the kind of memoir - that must have been lived first. Survived. So strap yourself in. It’s time for a real treat.”

Editorial Reviews

SaFranko (Lounge Lizard) sets out to find new ways to write about sex, but finds little help from his sketched-in protagonist, Max Zajack, an aspiring writer in 1970s New Jersey with a blue-collar chip on his shoulder. As Max bounces from crappy job to crappy job, he writes a novel and woos Olivia, the June stand-in to his would-be Henry, and many pages are dedicated to overheated accounts of their carnal satisfaction. Max and Olivia twist each other into physical, then psychological knots, and their four years together are marked by fights that rise in intensity as the sexual pyrotechnics fade. Max's narration reads like a hodgepodge of Henry Miller's sexual ferocity and Charles Bukowski's self-satisfied scumminess, and is as content in awkwardness ("the flesh of her luscious melons bulging delicately") as it is in shades of purple ("We were to take the plunge together into the subsoil of raw concupiscence, from which both ecstasy and madness spring, and forgo the dusty, worthless upper strata of passionless habit and duty that most humans know"). Sexus it ain't. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Safranko attaches a powerful message to an often painfully familiar story, about the individual versus the collective, the struggle to maintain the dream, and the importance of getting back up no matter how many times you fall.” — Booklist

“”SaFranko’s prose is enthusiastically profane…as a narrator Max is engaging, funny and full of straight-talk….SaFranko has a talent for two-fisted, Bukowski-esque prose…” — Kirkus Reviews

“Hating Olivia is a novel about youth, passion and irresponsibility….If your literary taste runs to writers like Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski, Celine and Anais Nin, Hating Olivia is a novel you’ll like.” — BlogCritics.org

Hating Olivia is a remarkable tale of obsession and lust, a stunning portrait of a dangerously alienated hero masterfully told. You will not be able to put it down.” — Mary Dearborn, author of Mailer: A Biography

“Hating Olivia is the kind of book - the kind of memoir - that must have been lived first. Survived. So strap yourself in. It’s time for a real treat.” — Dan Fante, author of Chump Change and 86'd

“... a book of quiet horrors and beautifully expressed longing... SaFranko’s prose is precise, flawless and the work of a man who truly loves and understands great writing.” — Tony O'Neill, author of Down and Out on Murder Mile and Sick City

“...radiates with an identifiable heartbreaking nostalgia that renders its affect timeless....Hating Olivia is a swift kick in the balls to modern fiction. — BookFetish.org

“SaFranko writes from the heart, and the balls, crafting a furious and passionate piece of work that is entirely his own, with some scenes that would make even Bukowski blush.” — — Susan Tomaselli (www.dogmatika.com)

“Throughout Hating Olivia, SaFranko shows his versatility and skill as a writer by making something supremely difficult look easy as hell.” — — Mike Ferraro (www.laurahird.com)

“...difficult to put down...an intense snapshot of love.” — http://subtlemelodrama.blogspot.com

From the Publisher

SaFranko writes from the heart, and the balls, crafting a furious and passionate piece of work that is entirely his own, with some scenes that would make even Bukowski blush.

Susan Tomaselli (www.dogmatika.com)

... a book of quiet horrors and beautifully expressed longing... SaFranko’s prose is precise, flawless and the work of a man who truly loves and understands great writing.

Tony O'Neill

...difficult to put down...an intense snapshot of love.

http://subtlemelodrama.blogspot.com

Hating Olivia is a remarkable tale of obsession and lust, a stunning portrait of a dangerously alienated hero masterfully told. You will not be able to put it down.

Mary Dearborn

Throughout Hating Olivia, SaFranko shows his versatility and skill as a writer by making something supremely difficult look easy as hell.

Mike Ferraro (www.laurahird.com)

Hating Olivia is the kind of book - the kind of memoir - that must have been lived first. Survived. So strap yourself in. It’s time for a real treat.

Dan Fante

Hating Olivia is a novel about youth, passion and irresponsibility….If your literary taste runs to writers like Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski, Celine and Anais Nin, Hating Olivia is a novel you’ll like.

BlogCritics.org

Safranko attaches a powerful message to an often painfully familiar story, about the individual versus the collective, the struggle to maintain the dream, and the importance of getting back up no matter how many times you fall.

Booklist

...radiates with an identifiable heartbreaking nostalgia that renders its affect timeless....Hating Olivia is a swift kick in the balls to modern fiction.

BookFetish.org

Safranko attaches a powerful message to an often painfully familiar story, about the individual versus the collective, the struggle to maintain the dream, and the importance of getting back up no matter how many times you fall.

Booklist

"Throughout Hating Olivia, SaFranko shows his versatility and skill as a writer by making something supremely difficult look easy as hell."

Mike Ferraro

"SaFranko writes from the heart, and the balls, crafting a furious and passionate piece of work that is entirely his own, with some scenes that would make even Bukowski blush."

Susan Tomaselli

...difficult to put down...an intense snapshot of love.

subtlemelodrama.blogspot.com

A couple's torrid affair slowly hits the skids over money, sex and art.

The novel stars narrator Max Zajack, who's struggling to balance go-nowhere jobs with an ambition to write great fiction in the lover-and-fighter mode of Norman Mailer and Henry Miller. (The book includes a praise-soaked introduction by Dan Fante, another member of that tribe.) Max is living in a decrepit New Jersey apartment and loading trucks for a living when, one night after playing guitar in a coffee shop, he meets Olivia, an attractive literature student. Their connection is almost immediate, though their relationship is more about sex than anything else—in the early pages SaFranko's prose is enthusiastically profane, capturing the hunger the two have for each other's bodies. Max moves into Olivia's apartment not long after, but it's soon clear that Olivia has bigger issues than he can handle: She quits her classes in a fit of pique, spends money she doesn't have on expensive clothes and is prone to screaming fits and threats that she'll do herself in. As Olivia's erratic behavior endangers the couple, Max struggles to find work, and many of the most entertaining set pieces have more to do with his day-job frustrations than with the titular character. Max's gigs involve doing practically nothing at AT&T and delivering newspapers to wealthy New Jersey suburbanites, jobs that heighten the novel's man-versus-Middle-America theme. As a narrator Max is engaging, funny and full of straight-talk, and his novel-in-progress is meant to push back against the complacency he witnesses daily. But while Max feels full-blooded, Olivia is largely a bundle of ever-escalating rage. There's little effort to identify the root causes of her actions (scenes describing her troubled relationship with her parents are thin), so the final chapters of the novel take on a repetitive feel: Olivia does something flighty, Max attempts to reason with her, Olivia explodes. Eventually the squabbles sap the novel's power—it, like the relationship it describes, has gone on for too long.

SaFranko (Lounge Lizard, 2007, etc.) has a talent for two-fisted, Bukowski-esque prose, but he needs a story more worthy of it.

Kirkus Reviews