Golden Days

This book never goes where you expect it to. Is it a satire of '80s SoCal self-empowerment? Is it a post-nuclear-war story of human apocalypse and survival? Both? Neither? The real story, for me, is in See's sentences: as swervy, surprising, and suddenly breathtaking as the hairpin turns of the Topanga Canyon road on which her narrator, post-divorce, finds a home in the midst of the particular LA excess of the era. As I emailed the friend who had tipped me off to this forgotten gem, after reading the jaw-dropping first dozen pages, "Joan Didion is reading this and thinking, 'I'm getting left in the dust." Rediscover this crazy and wonderful book, as we approach our own apocalypse(s).