Half Crazy: A Novel - Hardcover

McDonell, J. M.

2.95

21 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316555606 ISBN 13: 9780316555609

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1995

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Miranda is a successful New York model, and David, her neighbor, is a struggling gay writer, but when Miranda's face is slashed, everything changes in a first novel about the charm, pretensions, and savagery of haute New York. 20,000 first printing.

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From Publishers Weekly:

The cheeky, fresh and compelling narrator's voice immediately draws one into this roman a clef about angelically beautiful Miranda, who hails from unillustriously poor white-trash forebears in Arkansas and comes to New York, where she begins a career as a model. Narrator Dave Brown is an author of romance fiction, a gay guy whose sweetness, vulnerability and devotion to Miranda will endear him to readers of any persuasion. Dave's wistful crush on a Hollywood actor forms a muted subplot, but Miranda is his idol. He frets about her mood swings and tries to shield her from predatory swains while the two bounce around the high end of New York's show-biz society along with a cast of funny, flamboyant characters. Unfortunately, Miranda's other male fans are prime cads and criminals. Midway, her career topples when her vicious landlord (whose advances she has spurned) hires goons to slash her face. The novel's upbeat sassiness wilts, seemingly with nowhere to go, like Miranda. Dave muses on Miranda's "still hypnotic" visage, which has become a "crazy mirror" for other people. False friends drop from view, and one villain remains to be quashed?the boyfriend who plots to sell Miranda's life story (padded with lies) to the movies. McDonell writes with warmth, wit and credibility about the urban beauty scene and its fragility.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Miranda, a beautiful blond from Arkansas, moves into a New York "garden" (a big city euphemism for basement) apartment with an unfinished dirt floor. It's like a bad joke: she has come to make it big as a fashion model. As she moves in with her dog, Pete, she meets upstairs neighbor David, who's gay and writes bad romance novels. She and David fast become good friends. What's more, within days Miranda lands a big fashion job, and within months her face is on the covers of major magazines. Jealousy and trouble follow, though. In many ways, McDonell's novel is a sort of comic Edith Wharton story for the 1990s; that is, it's set in a rich New York society milieu, but a modern one made up of actors, writers, and movie producers who modernly have lots of sex. The novel's plot, in which Miranda's face gets slashed (just like the real model slashing a couple of years ago) and the police catch the jilted suitor who paid to have it done, is almost incidental. For this is basically a local color novel with lots of humor, interesting characters, and great subplots. Charles Harmon

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