An evocative, poignant saga of four people trapped — and ultimately destroyed — by their addictions
Sara Goldfarb is devastated by the death of her husband. She spends her days watching game shows and obsessing over appearing on television as a contestant — and her prescription diet pills only accelerate her mania. Her son, Harry, is living in the streets with his friend Tyrone and girlfriend … and girlfriend Marion, where they spend their days selling drugs and dreaming of escape. When their heroin supply dries up, all three descend into an abyss of dependence and despair, their lives, like Sara’s, doomed by the destructive power of drugs. Tragic and captivating, Requiem for a Dream is one of Selby’s most powerful works, and an indelible portrait of the ravages of addiction. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Hubert Selby Jr. including rare photos from the author’s estate.
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Reading this book was soul-crushing — calling it “bleak” feels like a euphemism, and I struggle to find a word heavy enough to describe how heart-rending this story is.
Requiem for a Dream is about four Americans imprisoned in their addictions. The prose is interesting: stripped of typical punctuation and grammar, the characters’ emotion and …
Although some of the content was good, I got really sick of those ~7 page paragraphs with mashed dialogue and no quotes. You never knew who was talking. You never knew if someone was talking or if it was the prose. You never knew what they were talking about due to era-specific mashed slang. To be honest, the street slang (1978) was hard to catch …
This book will stay with you forever.
Intense and tragic.
The word “good” to describe this book is not quite right, nor is the word “wonderful” accurate to describe the characters….however the book held my interest and I kept reading to see what would happen next and I grew to truly care about the characters. I finished the book 2 days ago, and I am still thinking about them. I gained insight into the …
A glimpse into Hell by one of my favorite authors, who I hadn’t read in at least a decade. For as brutal as Selby’s stories are, he writes from a place of deep empathy, love, and strong morality, and that’s what makes his novels hit so hard. You can feel his heart breaking for the characters who inhabit the worlds he creates, which, sadly, closely …