By: Seth Greenland Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Bloomsbury USA Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 320 Publication Date: July 08, 2008 Release Date: July 08, 2008
A witty and sexy satire about how contemporary American culture defines right and wrong, good and bad, from the acclaimed author of The Bones. When good guy Marcus Ripps takes over his black sheep brother’s lucrative dry cleaning business, he has no idea what he’s in for. Before long, he is running one of the most popular escort services in West Hollywood. As the money starts pouring in, he revitalizes his marriage, buys a new Mercedes, and gives his son a bar mitzvah he’ll never forget. But, when his conscience—and the law—starts to catch up with him, Marcus must decide if his sudden financial windfall is worth all the risk. A wild, clever, consistently hysterical romp, Shining City is an L.A. adventure that will keep you guessing to the very end.
LA Rapture Reading Greenland is like getting to live in Los Angeles with a smart and hip insider. You get an up close tour of LA with all its excitement, humor, adventure and sexuality. The book's a page turner and a delight -- months later you find yourself recalling a funny moment and trying to remember which friend told you about it and then you realize it was from Shining City.
A waste of time I'm sorry this novel is just a waste of time. Marcus Ripp is an honest man, toiling away in a legitimate business. His wife has a business that is unsuccessful as well. There isno joy in the house. Then he loses his job as the manufacturing plant is outsourced to China. A sorry life. However, his sleasy brother dies suddenly and leaves Marcus an illegal escort business run out of a dry cleaning front. Now that he is breaking the law his fortunes turn and life is wonderful. He even gets his prison term commuted because his powerful ex employer was caught in a comprimizing situation with Marcus' wife's ex partner, who is now a SM dominator. What kind of morality story is this. A 401K for prostitutes that don't reclare any income??? How does that work?
There is nothing redeaming anywhere in the novel. It's just not good enough to give away. Off to the recycle bin with it!!
Not so shiny, more like modertately entertaining. Marcus Ripps is a small man, 15 years in the same job - production manager at a toy factory, getting by. When his old college friend fires him for not moving to China when the factory closes, Marcus is at a loss. And then his brother dies and Marcus inherits his business...
Shining City is actually quite a sweet book, more about marriage than about sex, more about running a small business than prostitution. It never quite caught fire for me and definitely dragged a bit in the middle, but the denouement is satisfying.
I rate it an 'airplane book' - easy to read, easy to put down and leave for someone else to pick up... B-
SLIM SATIRE WEARS OUT ITS WELCOME FAST In this slim and mildly amusing send-up of contemporary culture, writer Seth Greenland starts with a knockout premise: a down-on-his-luck nobody opens what he calls a "family-values" escort service, one where the ladies are treated with respect and get a good dental plan to boot. Unfortunately the joke wears thin fast and Greenland resorts to the standard contrived plot twists and cast of quirky characters, including a pole-dancing, pot-smoking grandmother. (That character reappears to ever-diminishing returns as well.) Worst of all, for a wannabe page-turner along the lines of a Carl Hiassen novel, "Shining City" lacks any real menace, suspense or danger. The most entertaining and enduring satirists and their works -- I'm thinking of Mark Twain or some of the humor that runs through Elmore Leonard's crime fiction -- show a fearlessness and ability to tap into the times. Greenland recycles more than a few gags, occasionally underlines points for the reader, and seems to be indulging an in-joke by dropping obviously French words into the story, and I'm not talking about those that have worked their way into common usage like "sangfroid" or "bon mot" or "dishabille," all of which Greenland manages to use in a four-page span, but obscure ones like "droit du seigneur."
a comic novel that delivers the goods Seth Greenland's last book, The Bones, had great wit and plenty of comic angst and now, with his latest effort, Shining City, he continues to deliver the goods with the tale of a struggling, morally upstanding family man trying to keep it together and finding a very novel way to do so. With a deft ear and an acute eye for detail, Greenland mines the very human foibles of a decent guy trying to sustain his endangered middle class existence, and in the process, bringing a new kind of dignity to his new-found profession: pimp. The book is wonderfully entertaining-- full of twists and great character turns-- a crime novel, a comic novel, and in every way, a page-turner. I couldn't put it down.
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