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Wasted Beauty

By: Eric Bogosian
Narrated by: Eric Bogosian
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Publisher's summary

With his dark wit and corrosive dialogue, Eric Bogosian tells a powerful story of two lovers who form a mesmerizing and destructive bond while trying to evade the looming failure of their respective lives.

Reba runs away from her desolate rural community for the lure of New York City. Her tall and awkward frame lands her work modeling, but she is not prepared for the glamorous, drug-fueled life of a celebrated mannequin. After a series of painful relationships, she sees hope and an exit toward stability in the man who saves her brother's life.

That man is Rick, a successful SoHo general practitioner with an idyllic life that has left him discontented. He doesn't take Reba seriously at first, but soon finds himself so enmeshed in her beauty that he risks losing everything: his home, his children, and his beloved wife.

Wasted Beauty is master monologist Bogosian's enthralling journey through the high life of drugs, fashion celebrity, middle-class guilt, and sexual obsession.

©2005 Eric Bogosian (P)2005 Audible, Inc.
About the Creator- Eric Bogosian

About the Creator

Eric Bogosian has a notable career both on and off Broadway and on screen while establishing himself as a prolific author. For Drinking in America, he received the Drama Desk Award as well as an Obie. His play Talk Radio (in which he starred, and which was produced on Broadway with Liev Schreiber in 2007) was adapted to film by director Oliver Stone. For writing and starring in the film Talk Radio, Bogosian received the Berlin Silver Bear for achievement in 1989. He is the author of numerous plays, including suburbia (Lincoln Center Theater, 1994), film adaptations of his work, and three novels: Mall, Wasted Beauty and Perforated Heart. In 2015 Little, Brown published Bogosian's Operation Nemesis, a non-fiction account of the death squad that avenged the Armenian Genocide. More recently, Bogosian has been featured in the television series Billions, Succession, and in 2022, AMC's Interview with the Vampire. In 2019 he starred in the Safdie Brothers' celebrated Uncut Gems alongside Adam Sandler. His website, 100monologues.com, features notable actors performing his monologues. Bogosian lives in New York City with his wife, Director Jo Bonney.

What listeners say about Wasted Beauty

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Tried Hard

This is a novel about trying and failing. I'm not referring to the characters here - I'm referring to the author. Bogosian principally tries hard to imagine the life of a rags to riches to ruin farm girl turned model (discovered homeless! bright lights! big city! drugs! beaches! drugs! meaningless sex! drugs!) and the mid-life crisis of a married doctor with two kids much given to annoying inner dialog (I'm good! I'm bad! I'm a jerk! She loves me! Sho loves me not!) she has an affair with.

Not for me, anyway. Jaklak sez check it out if you're into this kind of thing. Otherwise, keep walking.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Entertaining and Inspiring . . .

A comic-style tragedy that reveals the contemporary human conditions, poignant, helpless, nonchalant, yet emotionally motivating and philosophically inspiriting, it is best for men age between 45 and 60. Parental and/or grand-parental guidance are recommended for the younger listeners.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Waste of time

This was an awful book. The characters were underdeveloped, and the author’s main purpose was to detail a man going through a midlife crisis and a successful model with a drug habit and obsession with older men. The author hints towards the model’s sexual encounters with these older men relating to possible father issues. But he never expands. He throws into the mix a brother dealing with drugs and mental illness…because he has sexual thoughts of his sister, and the model’s first job working at a bank, becoming interested in a man the age of her father, and ending with her giving him oral sex “because that’s what you do when you love someone.”

I would not recommend this book to anyone. Don’t waste your money or time on this one.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Highly recommended

I loved this book. It's not for everyone; it is grim in parts and weaves drugs and mindless sex throughout the story. Eric Bogosian is a terrific writer. Many of the passages, descriptions and metaphors display such creative brilliance that for once I wish I had read the book rather than listened to it.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great story

Eric Bogosian really hits reality in this book. All of it the good, the bad,and the ugly. Very real to me. The ending was good too.

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