Title: Requiem for a Dream
Author: Hubert Selby Jr
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Pr.
Requiem for a Dream is the story of Harry, his mother Sara, his best friend
Tyrone, and his girlfriend Marion and is based in Brooklyn. Harry and his
merry little crew spend most of their time smoking weed and occasionally
shooting up heroin. Sara spends most of her time in front of the TV and is
obsessed with losing weight and appearing on a game show.
Eventually Harry, Tyrone, and Marion think they can get rich quick by
purchasing a large quantity of uncut heroin, cutting it, and selling it on
the street at a huge profit. Harry and Marions' dream is to make a lot of
fast money and open a coffee house. They wind up using more heroin than they
sell. At about the same time Sara, Harry's mom, finds out that it is a lot
easier to lose weight taking diet pills rather than traditional diet. What
follows is a rapid decent into drug addiction.
What was amazing about this book was the fact that all the characters were
basically "regular people" at the beginning of the story but by the end of
the book they were basically reduced to animals whose only goal in life was
to get that next score. I don't know what kind of background Hubert Selby
has but this was written like it was a true story. All throughout their
landslide they thought they had their drug problem under control and they
didn't realize it was out of control until it was too late.
This was an extremely good book but at the same time was depressing. I had a
hard time getting through the last 50 or so pages. If the title of this book
sounds familiar that's because it was released as a movie directed by Darren
Aronofsky of Pi fame. At first the book may be a little hard to read as most
of the characters talk slang and it is written the way they talk. This is
one of those books that kind of sucks you into the story and before you know
it you are sympathizing for the central characters.
Check out what other readers said
about it on Amazon.
Punkis