The Story of Junk

Witty, terrifying, and utterly cool, Yablonsky’s roman à clef is a searing, hyperreal account of the heroin underground in 1980s Manhattan.

Told with dark humor and unremitting honesty, Linda Yablonsky’s riveting first novel explores the New York art and postpunk music world of the early 1980s from deep within. Set in motion by the appearance of a federal agent, the tale follows two women on a dangerous and seductive journey through a bohemia where hard drugs, extreme behavior, intense friendships, and the emergence of AIDS profoundly alter their lives.

“[The Story of Junk] is a fascinating account—sometimes joyful, sometimes harrowing, always brimming with love—of life at the edge of one’s soul, and it’s told with talent and remarkable empathy.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Yablonsky’s rendering of the drug scene on the Lower East Side is almost surreal in its nihilistic intensity, and her descriptions of the euphoria heroin grants, ‘a sublime nausea, . . . a leap beyond fate, a divine embrace,’ are at once terrifying and seductive. An unsparing yet witty and tender novel with an unmistakable aura of truth.” —Booklist

“Like a grisly car accident that you can’t tear your eyes from, Yablonsky’s gripping [novel] . . . tells an unglamorous, yet oddly seductive, tale that is by turns charming and horrifying. . . . Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

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