ken o'steen

A quintessential novel of modern Los Angeles, Peeko Pacifiko is at once an outrageous romp, a survival story, a sardonic political history, and a keen literary walkabout. At once squalid and glamorous, literary and low-brow, philosophical and wanton, wickedly funny and empathetic, it is as honest as it is innovative, its own unique, hydra-headed genre. As the Nineties dwindle down, the waning days of one era and the dawn of a new one are seen through the eyes of Donovan. At loose ends, he and his wife forced by economic necessity to live apart, his is a unique passage through many a strata of Los Angeles life. Donovan and those around him may be down, but they are never more than superficially out. Peeko Pacifiko is an exuberant, episodic ride, an exploration of character, as well as of a city, rendered with playful and disarming erudition, straight razor wit, and well-observed descriptive power.