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SUICIDE PUMPKINS - A LOVE STORY
Author : L B Sedlacek
Published Ex-Libris, September 2000 (available major online booksellers). Softcover, 180 pages, ISBN: 0738833819, ISBN: 073887583X (Ebook version).
Reviewed by ALEX REEVES
In the contemporary fiction book, Suicide Pumpkins, the suicide plans of a would-be actress in Hollywood fall apart when she meets her Prince Charming in San Diego. He comes to her rescue complete with a white Porsche and a pumpkin.
This book offers black humor at its best and is described on the jacket as an offbeat "Cinderella" story.
The two main characters are Jessica Tyler, a college theater graduate, who has moved to Hollywood to become an actress and Jeremy Chance, a millionaire from San Diego who has inherited the family business - a holding company. Jessie cannot find work as an actress so she makes ends meet by sort of working as a cashier at Ralph's grocery store and lives on a park bench in the Park above the Santa Monica Pier. She sneaks into the hotels for showers and lives off vodka staying in touch via her answering service, a P.O. Box and a black cherry red Mustang convertible. She finally gets a break by getting on contestants row on The Price Is Right. And, she finally gets her first real acting job in a B movie called Sand Castles. But, she finds out show business can be a lot harder than sleeping on a park bench or sneaking into hotels in Santa Monica. So, she plans on her suicide and heads down to San Diego to jump off the bridge. Jeremy literally stumbles into Jessica's path on the Coronado Bay Bridge and shows her just what happens to a pumpkin when it's dropped from so high up.
This book was a quick and quirky read. There is a little violence and sexual content, so it's not for children. The writing is very much along the veins of Generation X or Less Than Zero, or Fugitive Blue. It is a book for the GenX generation, but twenty-somethings and baby-boomers would enjoy it, too.