Sex & Rage

It is the 1970s in LA, and Jacaranda Leven - child of sun and surf - is swept into the dazzling cultural milieu of the beautiful people. Floating on a cloud of drink, drugs and men, she finds herself adrift, before her talent for writing, and a determined literary agent, set her on a course for New York and a new life.Sex & Rage is a recently re-discovered classic from author Eve Babitz, herself a muse to many an artist, writer and musician in the 1970s. A semi-autobiographical novel, it charts the highs and lows of a life lived at the limits, and transports the reader to a sunnier, dreamier, more reckless time and place.

As cool, sharp and delicious as a perfectly executed Mint Julep. Babitz writes with wit and clarity - and always, always with a whole lot of heart, Babitz writes like no one else, but if she sounds like anyone, it is Nora Ephron writing songs for Lana del Rey. Sex & Rage is seductive, funny and infuriating - it's a slacker siren song, a novel about writers and writing and a heavenly holiday to '70s LA all at once, Pure pleasure - a perpetual-motion machine of no-stakes elation and champagne fizz, Babitz's style is cool, conversational, loose, yet weighted with a seemingly effortless poetry, Gritty, glamorous, toxic and intoxicating

Eve Babitz was born and grew up in Hollywood. She began to write in 1972 after designing album covers for such artists as Linda Ronstadt, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds and Lord Buckley. Her articles and short stories have appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire and The New York Times Book Review.