PRAISE FOR ARTHUR NERSESIAN

For Suicide Casanova

“Sick, depraved, and heartbreaking—in other words, a great read, a great book. Suicide Casanova is erotic noir and Nersesian’s hard-boiled prose comes at you like a jailhouse confession.”

—Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir!

“Nersesian has written a scathingly original page-turner, hilarious, tragic, and shocking—this may be his most brilliant novel yet.”

—Kate Christensen, author of In the Drink

“… tight, gripping, erotic thriller …” —Philadelphia City Paper

“Sleek, funny, and sometimes sickening … a porn nostalgia novel, if you will, a weepy nod to the sleaze pond that Times Square once was.”

—Memphis Flyer

“A vivid, compelling psychothriller, Suicide Casanova confirms Nersesian’s place as one of New York City’s most important chroniclers. His unique psychological vision of the city rates with those of Paul Auster and Madison Smartt Bell.”—Blake Nelson, author of Girl and User

“Every budding author should read this book. Stop your creative writing class on the technique of Hemingway and study the elegant gritty prose of Nersesian. Stop your literary theory class on Faulkner and read the next generation of literary genius.”—Cherry Bleeds

“This is no traditional Romeo & Juliet love story. It is like no love story I’ve ever read, which is why it reads fast, deep, and intense … A great story by a talented writer.”—New Mystery Reviews

For The Fuck-Up

“The charm and grit of Nersesian’s voice is immediately enveloping, as the down-and-out but oddly up narrator of his terrific novel, The Fuck-Up, slinks through Alphabet City and guttural utterances of love.”

—Village Voice

“Nersesian creates a charming everyman whose candor and sure-footed description of his physical surroundings and emotional framework help his tale flow naturally and therefore believably.”—Paper

“For those who remember that the eighties were as much about destitute grit as they were about the decadent glitz described in the novels of Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, this book will come as a fast-paced reminder.” —Time Out New York

“The Fuck-Up is Trainspotting without drugs, New York style.”

—Hal Sirowitz, author of Mother Said

“Fantastically alluring! I cannot recommend this book highly enough!”

—Flipside

“Combining moments of brilliant black humor with flashes of devastating pain, it reads like a roller coaster ride … A wonderful book.”

—Alternative Press

“Touted as the bottled essence of early eighties East Village living, The Fuck-Up is, refreshingly, nothing nearly so limited … A cult favorite since its first, obscure printing in 1991, I’d say it’s ready to become a legitimate religion.”—Smug Magazine

“Not since The Catcher in the Rye, or John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, have I read such a beautifully written book … Nersesian’s powerful, sure-footed narrative alone is so believably human in its poignancy … I couldn’t put this book down.” —Grid Magazine

For Manhattan Loverboy

“Best Book for the Beach, Summer 2000.”—Jane Magazine

“Best Indie Novel of 2000.”—Montreal Mirror

“Part Lewis Carroll, part Franz Kafka, Nersesian leads us down a maze of false leads and dead ends … told with wit and compassion, drawing the reader into a world of paranoia and coincidence while illuminating questions of free will and destiny. Highly recommended.”

—Library Journal

“A tawdry and fantastic tale … Nersesian renders Gotham’s unique cocktail of wealth, poverty, crime, glamour, and brutality spectacularly. This book is full of lies, and the author makes deception seem like the subtext of modern life, or at least America’s real pastime … Love, hate, and falsehood commingle. But in the end, it is [protagonist] Joey’s search for his own identity that makes this book a winner.” —Rain Taxi Review of Books

“Funny and darkly surreal.”—New York Press

“… a hilarious and warped passion play, Manhattan Loverboy … the dense story surges with survivalist instinct, capturing everyman’s quest for a sense of individuality.”—Smug Magazine

“MLB sits somewhere between Kafka, DeLillo, and Lovecraft—a terribly frightening, funny, and all too possible place.” —Literary Review of Canada

“Nersesian’s literary progress between The Fuck-Up and Manhattan Loverboy is like Beckett’s between Happy Days and Not I … MLB is about how distance from power and decision-making can skew our reality, can leave us feeling like pawns in an incomprehensible game.” —Toronto Star

For Chinese Takeout

“Not since Henry Miller has a writer so successfully captured the …

tribulations of a struggling artist … A masterly image.”

—Library Journal (starred review)

“One of the best books I’ve read about the artist’s life. Nersesian captures the obsession one needs to keep going under tough odds … trying to stay true to himself, and his struggle against the odds makes for a compelling read.”

—Village Voice

“… a heartfelt, tragicomic bohemian romance with echoes of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice … Infused with the symbolism of Greek legend, the hip squalor of this milieu takes on a mythic charge that energizes Nersesian’s lyrical celebration of an evanescent moment in the life of the city.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Capturing in words the energy, dynamism, and exhaustion of creating visual art is a definite achievement. Setting the act of creation amidst Lower East Side filth, degradation, and hope, and making that environment a palpable, organic character in a novel confirms Nersesian’s literary artistry. His edgy exploration of the love of art and of life, and of the creative act and the sweat and toil inherent to it, is hard to put down.”

—Booklist

“Thoroughly validates Nersesian’s rep as one of the wittiest and most perceptive chroniclers of downtown life.”—Time Out New York

“Nersesian has a talent for dark comedy and witty dialgoue … Woven throughout … are gems of observational brilliance … A vivid tour.”

—American Book Review

“A witty tour through the lowest depths of high art … A fast paced portrait of the joys and venalities of la vie bohème.”—Kirkus Reviews

For Unlubricated

“Reading Unlubricated can make you feel like a commuter catapulting herself down the stairs to squeeze onto the A train before the doors close … In his paean to the perplexities of dislocation and discovery—

both in bohemian life and in life at large—Nersesian makes us eager to see what happens when the curtain finally rises.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Nersesian’s raw, smutty sensibility is perfect for capturing the gritty city artistic life, but this novel has as much substance as style …

Nersesian continuously ratchets up the suspense, always keeping the fate of the production uncertain—and at the last minute he throws a curveball that makes the previous chaos calm by comparison. Nersesian is a first-rate observer of his native New York …”

—Publishers Weekly

“Nersesian knows his territory intimately and paces the escalating chaos with a precision that would do Wodehouse proud.”

—Time Out New York

“A real delight—fast and funny and pure New York. Unlubricated has only one flaw: It ends.”—Steve Kluger, author of Last Days of Summer

For dogrun,

“Darkly comic … It’s Nersesian’s love affair with lower Manhattan that sets these pages afire.” —Entertainment Weekly

“A rich parody of the all-girl punk band.” —New York Times Book Review

“Nersesian’s blackly comic urban coming-of-angst tale offers a laugh in every paragraph.” —Glamour