Chemical Pink

by Katie Arnoldi

Overview

A stunning and compelling portrait of two obsessed personalities and the perversely symbiotic relationship that draws them together.

Aurora Jeanine Johnson is an unwed mother from Savannah, Georgia, desperate to sculpt a new life—and a new body—in California, where the quest for the perfect butt or bicep reaches religious intensity. Spending every spare moment training at the gym, Aurora is barely getting by—until she meets the man who will offer her everything she most desires. Charles Worthington is a wealthy eccentric, rich enough to indulge his every decadent whim and fantasy. Aurora is his sexual ideal, the raw material from which he will shape his masterpiece. He will transform Aurora into the woman of his dreams—and fantasies—no matter the cost. To achieve their common goal, Aurora hands over complete control of her life to Charles. He dictates her diet, her lifestyle, her training—and when and how much she'll take of the body-altering drugs he “prescribes” for her. He decides whom she sees and where she goes. And what kinky games of his own devising they will play. For Aurora, everything that Charles asks is a small price to pay to become the woman she's always dreamed of being. Or is it? Chemical Pink is a gothic duet that explores the boundary between obsession and pathology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468307948
Publisher:	The Overlook Press
Publication date:	09/02/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	807 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Katie Arnoldi lives in Venice, California, where she surfs competitively in long board competitions. She is married to the painter Charles Arnoldi; they have two children.

Editorial Reviews

It is difficult these days to shock and beguile with a kind of aggressive innocence, but Miss Arnoldi has in this book. It is disturbingly funny and utterly unflinching.

Susanna Moore

Chemical Pink is a dazzling first novel-entirely original, dizzyingly controlled, all ice-cool momentum on the surface and all shock below.

Joan Didion

Chemical Pink is a compelling novel that explores a dark and troubling world. I was fascinated-and occasionally repelled-by this rarefied subculture that Arnoldi so skillfully leads us into. She is a talented writer with a sharp, distinctive voice.

Carrie Fisher

Arnoldi's searing tale, a true binge read, boldly dramatizes the consequences of narcissism and misplaced ambition.

Booklist

Pygmalion goes to the gym in this tawdry expos of the fetishistic, dangerous world of women's bodybuilding. Charles Worthington, a middle-aged, sexually eccentric millionaire, finds his Galatea in Aurora Jeanine Johnson, a single mom with big bodybuilding dreams. Young, blonde Aurora arrives from Savannah, Ga., in search of a new life and a new body on the West Coast. Charles spots her on a beach, then tracks her down at the gym where she is training, and the two strike up a bizarre, co-dependent relationship. In exchange for financial support and full-time training, Aurora becomes her mentor's sexual plaything--though her instant and ongoing subjugation to the repulsive Charles defies all logic. Together, their goal is for Aurora to win a title in a top national competition. In exchange for working toward her dream, Charles takes complete control of Aurora's life--dictating her diet, her lifestyle, her training and her huge intake of steroids. As her training progresses, Aurora loses control over her life and neglects her young daughter, Amy. Supporting characters crawl out from beneath various rocks: a deranged ex-boyfriend named Skip DeBilda, who befriends Amy; Hendrik, Aurora's crooked trainer; and a motley cast of pumped-up grotesques at the gym. The writing is peppered with descriptions of bad outfits and sex acts so arcane as to be downright laughable. Arnoldi does try to provide an insider's look at this outlandish corner of the subculture, based on her own experience as a professional bodybuilder--too bad it's overshadowed by the porn. (Mar.) Forecast: This galley came to PW with two author photos, one a glam head shot of Arnoldi, the other of her in a pink bikini, flexing in triumph as the 1992 Southern California Bodybuilding Champion. She looks good in both, but it's obvious which one, if put on the book jacket, is going to galvanize browser attention. In any case, the publisher has some interesting marketing plans, including advertising in Women's Sports and Fitness, that should boost sales. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A Los Angeles–set first novel about the obsessive cult of women's bodybuilding. When bodybuilding champion May leaves him, Charles Worthington, a wealthy southern California eccentric, patrols the Venice gyms for a new woman to sponsor. Charles is something new in fiction: a serial sculptor, owner, and destroyer of women's bodies. Into his gym life, and into the laboratory of his sponsorship, comes Aurora Jeanine Johnson, a single mother from the Deep South, and between them there occurs something of the telegraphy of sculptor and stone. Soon Aurora isn't just lifting and training as per Charles's instructions, but she's also eating, drinking, and injecting whatever she's told to. Charles chisels Aurora from hard-body wannabe to comic book superhero to sex toy—the object of Charles's fantasies. At first, that's an easy enough price for Aurora to pay. She's always aspired to a bodybuilding physique, and Charles's subsidies enable her to bring her teenaged daughter Amy to L.A. as well. But, like her body, the price Aurora pays grows in increments. The demands of the gym floor, the regimen of the kitchen, and the humiliation of the bedroom take their toll. Under all the growth hormones, Aurora's clitoris enlarges as her voice drops. Meanwhile, Charles's attraction to manly women develops into a compulsion for Doughdee, a black dominatrix with shoulders linebacker wide, while a resentful and neglected Amy wobbles on trendy cowboy boots that her thickening frame can't master. Arnoldi shows herself to be an impeccable, and sometimes lyrical, authority on the world she describes, providing litanies of the obsessions that gymratsdevelop—the work-out regimens, the growthdrugs, the nauseating side-effects—all juxtaposed with fastidious descriptions of Charles's sexual performances, where thrusts are counted like weightlifters' reps. The occasionally flabby prose and muscle-bound characterization undercut the impact of an exposé that's equal parts a Pumping Iron-documentary and a Harold Robbins shock-me please.

Kirkus Reviews