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Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
"Candy is beside me, drenched in sweat. She's breathing gently, long slow breaths. I imagine her soul going in and out: wanting to leave, wanting to come back, wanting to leave, wanting to come back. The day will soon harden into what we need to do. But for now we have each other. . . ."
He met Candy amid a lush Sydney summer. Gorgeous, sexy, free-spirited Candy. They fell in love fast, lots of laughter and lust, the days melting warmly into each other. He never planned to give her a habit. But she wanted a taste. And wasn't love, after all, about sharing lives? Candy had a bit of money and in the beginning, everything was beautiful. Heady, heroin-hazed days, the world open and inviting. But when the money ran out, the craving remained, and the days ceased their luxurious stretch.
But there was still love. Only now, it was a threesome. Heroin had its own demands, its own timetable, and thoughts of nabbing the next fix hurled them into each day. Then, when desperation sets in, Candy will stop at nothing to secure a blast, as she and her lover become hostage to the nightmarish world of addiction.
Painful, sexy, tender, and charged with dark humor, Candy provocatively charts the daily rituals of two lovers maintaining a long-term junk habit. Told in stunningly vivid prose and set against the backdrop of suburban and urban Australia, Candy is both an electrifying and frightening glimpse of contemporary life and love.
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| candy |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I would have liked to know which cover design I would get. The one I received was different from the one pictured.
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| Simultaneously halycon and horrific |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Davies' first novel Candy became a cult classic when it was released in 1997, and it's not hard to see why. At face value, it has a grungy, sexy appeal, featuring the gripping, through the keyhole details of a serious heroin addiction, and two attractive main characters who have lots of sex, and experience a welter of often orgasmic pleasure and intense pain. It's an easily read, fast paced bildungsroman which offers a satisfyingly vicarious experience. But Candy is more than a sad love story or a novel about drug addiction. The sweet attraction of the title may be simultaneously heroin, sugary substances, and the novel's beautiful subject, but the story is about more than simply the desirable substances that drives the narrative forward. This is a novel about the universals of human need. Davies is first and foremost a poet, and the linguistic tautness of the book reflects this. Although the narration is cool, set in the detached context of a distanced memoir, there are italicised passages prefixed with the title "truth" that take the reader below the skin and bones of the linear narration and move us into a place which is timeless. Candy is an easy book to read, but not an easy one to deal with. It leaves the reader feeling shattered, as if he or she had been through a similar experience. The verisimilitude in characterisation, setting, and in the great detail of the activities of the narrator and Candy are all part of why this book weaves its spell on the reader. With the nostalgic resonance of a story simultaneously halcyon and horrific, the reader feels the power of the great love felt by the narrator for people, sensations and places lost forever. ~~ Magdalena Ball is the author of Sleep Before Evening
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| A look at a heroin addict |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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The descriptions are so vivid and the the authors def in recreating a junkies life brings this great creation "Candy". Luke Davies has really captured the essence of addiction and the struggles of it. These 2 characters are very real. This is a good book to read to understand a drug addicts struggle, or maybe if you even are having problems with heroin, to understand how much worse it can really get.
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| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Very interesting and well written account of drug abuse. Was turned into a movie with Heath Ledger that was good as well.
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| Anyone Ever Read Panic In Needle Park |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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Because this book has a lot in common with it. Except the guy plays a small-time thief in the book who helps brings in money, not as much as the mid-west hooker girlfriend, but some, not completely helpless. And in the movie version, instead of being played by Heath Ledger, he was--some could say--Al Pacino first big role. This book reads completely different but the stories the same. It's the same as Junky by William S. Burroughs, in some way. I didn't find anything original in it. It is a good story, somewhat interesting, certainly enrapturing writing. But it was not original. The only original book I've read on Heroin that mirrors the stories I myself have told of it, is that of Trainspotting (and by pure asthetic value I didn't like Trainspotting that much) and I don't think you'll find a more original telling of addiction anywhere in literature. You read one addicts tale you've read them all. So I can only in good conscience give this book a three star rating. It is honest and real and definitely interesting, definitely talks about the dangers of chemical romances, alsoe known as poisoned relationships.
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