Kamikaze Lust

Kamikaze Lustby first-time novelist Lauren Sanders takes the reader on an electrifying ride through the spectacle of life and death in millennial America. Smart, hardboiled and humorous, the novel taps our obsession with sex and death, sex and popular culture, sex and the written word, sex and pornography, sex and green M&Ms, and, of course, the perennial sex and love.

"Great courage must account for such complete disregard of political correctness, and great sensitivity for such sadness."-Amanda Filipacchi, author of Vaporand Nude Men

Lauren Sandersis a novelist and journalist who lives in New York City. She is co-editor of the anthology Too Darn Hot: Writing About Sex Since Kinsey, published by Persea Books in 1998. She is a graduate of Columbia University's school of journalism and has an MA in Creative Writing from City College in New York.

An ExcerptChapter Four: One in the Hand, Two in the Bush

"Hold it!" Alexis commanded. A click and the cameras stopped; all eyes turned to her. Bodies stilled off set as if she'd pressed a pause button. On set, a man relaxed his grip on a woman's thighs, which had been posed missionary-style making her look somewhat like a roasted chicken. Her legs dropped to the bed. He took a few steps back glaring at Alexis as he stroked his erect penis. But for the alacrity of his hand-cock motion, he looked like some kind of sex zombie.

Having arrived just a few minutes earlier, I took the opportunity to move in and claim a camouflaged spot behind a couple of leafy floor plants, going for my usual fly-on-the-wall routine. Alexis sighed, "Billie, you've got to get the light in closer." Without a word, the woman standing behind a massive eye ball of a light dollied forward. I held out my microcassette recorder. "That's it, on top of her, I want to see her pussy glow. And can we get some glitter makeup on her thighs?" A woman with enough unguents to paint the cast of Cats came running. As if she were a gynecologist, she sat down in front of the star's legs and began her cosmetic doctoring. "Beautiful," Alexis said. "We're going for broke here, boys and girls, the fucking of the gods." There were a few giggles. Al

Kamikaze Lust by first-time novelist Lauren Sanders takes the reader on an electrifying ride through the spectacle of life and death in millennial America. Smart, hardboiled and humorous, the novel taps our obsession with sex and death, sex and popular culture, sex and the written word, sex and pornography, sex and green M&Ms, and, of course, the perennial sex and love.

Fiction. KAMIKAZE LUST puts a snappy spin on a traditional theme — young woman in search of herself — and stands it on its head. In a crackling, rapid-fire voice studded with deadpan one-liners and evocative descriptions, Rachel Silver takes us to such far-flung places as a pompous charity benefit, the set of an 'art-porn' movie, her best friend's body, Las Vegas casinos, and the psyche of her own porn-star alter ego, Silver Ray, all knit together by the unspoken question: who am I, anyway? And as Rachael tells it, asking the question is more important than knowing for sure could ever be. — Kate Christensen.