'One of the tragicomic classics of the AIDS era' The Nation Mimi Smithers, forty-something housewife and aesthete manquee, has moved with her Union Carbide husband from Tehran to Westchester. Life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Joel, a dazzlingly handsome porn star. Soon she tumbles down the rabbit hole of Manhattan and Fire Island society, helping glamorous Joel with his lucrative mail order business (signed photographs, used underwear, 'verbal abuse audiotapes'), and her real dreams and adventures begin. A Madame Bovary for the heyday of gay New York, Love Junkie, first published in 1992, is reissued here in its full and naked glory.

Details

ISBN13: 9780241795095
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 272
Edition:
Publication Date: 09 Jun 2026
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.7(H)x13(L)x1.8(W)206
Weight (gm): 206

Author Biography

Robert Plunket was born in Greenville, Texas, in 1945, but raised in Havana and Mexico City. After college he moved to New York and became Mr Chatterbox, the gossip columnist for Sarasota Magazine. He has published two novels, My Search for Warren Harding (1983) and Love Junkie (1992). He is retired and lives in a trailer park in Englewood, Florida, where he enjoys collecting old quilts and raising succulents from scratch.

Reviews

Love Junkie is a comedy of manners with a time bomb ticking behind the curtain * New York Times *
Hilarious, very sad, and constantly teetering on the brink of being genuinely offensive. But it isn’t offensive! -- Lauren Oyler
One of the tragicomic classics of the AIDS era. In a groovier universe, Plunket would have gone on publishing novels in addition to his journalism… As it is, the strength and singularity of the two books he did publish demand an accounting of their place in the American fiction of the 1980s and ’90s * The Nation *