Was it the bourbon or the dye fumes that made the pink walls quiver like vaginal lips?Twenty-five years after its initial publication, Darcey Steinke’s sensational Suicide Blonde has lost none of its raw charge. Jesse is a beautiful twenty-nine-year-old adrift in San Francisco’s demimonde of sexually ambiguous, drug-taking outsiders, desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend Bell. She becomes caretaker and confidante to Madame Pig, a grotesque, besotted recluse. Jesse also meets Madison, Pig’s daughter or lover or both, who uses others’ desires for her own purposes, and who leads Jesse into a world beyond all boundaries. As startling, original, and vital as it was when first published at the height of the grunge era, Suicide Blonde is an intensely erotic story of one young woman’s sexual and psychological odyssey and a modern cult classic.

Suicide Blonde

Literature & Fiction

STEINKE, Darcey

Contemporary

Picador

“Many days I believe menopause is the new (if long overdue) frontier for the most compelling and necessary philosophy; Darcey Steinke is already there, blazing the way. This elegant, wise, fascinating, deeply moving book is an instant classic. I’m about to buy it for everyone I know.” ―Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
A brave, brilliant, and unprecedented examination of menopause
Menopause hit Darcey Steinke hard. First came hot flashes. Then insomnia. Then depression. As she struggled to express what was happening to her, she came up against a culture of silence. Throughout history, the natural physical transition of menopause has been viewed as something to deny, fear, and eradicate. Menstruation signals fertility and life, and childbirth is revered as the ultimate expression of womanhood. Menopause is seen as a harbinger of death. Some books Steinke found promoted hormone replacement therapy. Others encouraged acceptance. But Steinke longed to understand menopause in a more complex, spiritual, and intellectually engaged way.
In Flash Count Diary, Steinke writes frankly about aspects of Menopause that have rarely been written about before. She explores the changing gender landscape that comes with reduced hormone levels, and lays bare the transformation of female desire and the realities of prejudice against older women. Weaving together her personal story with philosophy, science, art, and literature, Steinke reveals that in the seventeenth century, women who had hot flashes in front of others could be accused of being witches; that the model for Duchamp's famous Étant donnés was a post-reproductive woman; and that killer whales―one of the only other species on earth to undergo menopause―live long post-reproductive lives. 
Flash Count Diary, with its deep research, open play of ideas, and reverence for the female body, will change the way you think about menopause. It's a deeply feminist book―honest about the intimations of mortality that menopause brings while also arguing for the ascendancy, beauty, and power of the post-reproductive years.

Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Women's Health

Sarah Crichton Books

Sixteen-year-old Eddie, who spends summers on an island with his mother, falls in love with a spirited island girl as his mother, forced to choose between two men, takes to the sea for solace

Up Through the Water

United States

DOUBLEDAY

Washington Square Press

Was it the bourbon or the dye fumes that made the pink walls quiver like vaginal lips?Twenty-five years after its initial publication, Darcey Steinke’s sensational Suicide Blonde has lost none of its raw charge. Jesse is a beautiful twenty-nine-year-old adrift in San Francisco’s demimonde of sexually ambiguous, drug-taking outsiders, desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend Bell. She becomes caretaker and confidante to Madame Pig, a grotesque, besotted recluse. Jesse also meets Madison, Pig’s daughter or lover or both, who uses others’ desires for her own purposes, and who leads Jesse into a world beyond all boundaries. As startling, original, and vital as it was when first published at the height of the grunge era, Suicide Blonde is an intensely erotic story of one young woman’s sexual and psychological odyssey and a modern cult classic.

GROVE PRESS

From one of the most daring young writers in America, Jesus Saves, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, is a suburban gothic that explores the sources of evil, confronts the dynamic shifts within theology, and traces the consequences of suburban alienation. Set in the modern launch pads of adolescent ritual, the strip malls and duplexes on the back side of suburbia, it's the story of two girls: Ginger, a troubled minister's daughter; and Sandy Patrick, who has been abducted from summer camp and now smiles from missing-child posters all over town. Layering the dreamscapes of Alice in Wonderland with the subculture of River's Edge, Darcey Steinke's Jesus Saves is an unforgettable passage through the depths of the literary imagination.

Jesus Saves

Vanity Fair called this intensely erotic story of a young woman's sexual and psychological odyssey "a provocative tour through the dark side." Jesse, a beautiful twenty-nine-year-old, is adrift in San Francisco's demimonde of sexually ambiguous, bourbon-drinking, drug-taking outsiders. While desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend in a world of confused and forbidden desire, she becomes the caretaker of and confidante to Madame Pig, a besotted, grotesque recluse. Jesse also falls into a dangerous relationship with Madison, Pig's daughter or lover or both, who uses others' desires for her own purposes, hurtling herself and Jesse beyond all boundaries. With Suicide Blonde, Darcey Steinke delves into themes of identity and time, as well as the common — and now tainted — language of sexuality.

Darcey Steinke's first novel, now back in print, is an unusually assured and lyrical debut. Set on an island resort town off North Carolina, it tells of summer people and islanders, mothers and sons, women and men, love and its dangers. It is the story of Emily, a woman free as the waves she swims in every day, of the man who wants to clip her wings, of her son and the summer that he will become a man. George Garrett called it "clean-cut, lean-lined, quickly moving, and audacious. . . . [Steinke is] compassionate without sentimentality, romantic without false feelings, and clearly and extravagantly gifted." "Beautifully written . . . a seamless and almost instinctive prose that often reads more like poetry than fiction." -- Robert Olmstead, The New York Times Book Review; "Dazzling and charged . . . Darcey Steinke has the sensuous and precise visions of female and male, and of the light and dark at the edge of the sea." -- John Casey.

Jesus Saves, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, is a chilling horror story, a suburban gothic set not among green manicured lawns and cul-de-sacs, but the trash-filled woods between subdivisions and superhighways and the strip malls and duplexes on the back side of town. It’s the story of two girls: Ginger, a troubled minister’s daughter; and Sandy Patrick, who was abducted from summer camp and now smiles from missing-child posters all over town. Layering the dreamscapes of Alice in Wonderland with the subculture of River’s Edge, Darcey Steinke’s Jesus Saves is an unforgettable passage through the depths of literary imagination. In her introduction to this new edition, Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet reflects on the book's long-lasting effect on her and the way she reads while tracing its influence on "subsequent, similarly powerful fictions like Emma Donoghue's Room and Barbara Gowdy's Helpless." Like Jesus Saves, Millet's introduction is moving and unsettling, and provides the perfect frame for this cult classic.

The story of a young woman's sexual and psychological odyssey portrays her desperate relationships with her bisexual boyfriend and her adopted confidante, Madam Pig--a corpulent recluse living on memories and red wine

Atlantic Monthly Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by STEINKE, Darcey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by STEINKE, Darcey

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by STEINKE, Darcey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Suicide Blonde

Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life

Up Through the Water

Up Through the Water

Suicide Blonde

Jesus Saves

Suicide Blonde

Up Through the Water

Jesus Saves

Suicide Blonde