Some years ago, Gary Indiana visited Eurodisney, and returned with a suggestion for how it could be improved. 'If I ran an amusement park,' he wrote, 'there would be real pirates and gypsies and an authentic criminal element on hand to supply a sense of risk.' He constructs fiction on the same principle. His early works featured characters designed to resemble his past lives and former friends: a New York art critic in obsessive love (Horse Crazy); an American who acted in European art films (Gone Tomorrow). His fourth and fifth novels both contained accounts of real multiple murders, along with real bondage, real child abuse and real drugs. Depraved Indifference, his sixth, offers you a wider range of true-life attractions: four real murders, as you'd expect, and a probably-real case of incest; but also a houseful of real antiques, and a heroine who really does look like Elizabeth Taylor.

LRB 25 July 2002 | PDF Download