Squandering the blue

the long version

This remarkable twelve-story cycle chronicles the lives of several Los Angeles women. There are Diana Barrington, single mother and poet, and her best friend Carlotta McKay, who venture into the ruined tropic Southern California. Here they meet the men of their nightmares in crash and burn weekends they will call the best times of their lives. Later, Diana and Carlotta will travel through the desert to close down a nuclear power plant in Nevada, driving through their own personal apocalypse. There is Jessica Moore, an abused wife dreaming of escape to San Fernando Valley, away from her husband and habits and Beverly Hills, with its obscene borders of Bougainvillea and orchids. And there is Maggie Decker, who takes her insolent teenage daughter on a trip to Eastern Europe, only to find the distance between them greater than the ocean they've crossed.