‘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.