Beautiful Garbage: A Novel [Paperback]

If Holly Golightly lived in the '80s, how far would she go to make a name for herself as Manhattan's artist du jour? We know all about Warhol, Basquiat, Keith Haring, and their fictional counterparts, but what about the edgy women artists of this time?
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Jodi Plum: smart, talented, ambitious, troubled. Fresh out of her teens, she leaves suburbia for Manhattan's glam and gritty art scene, and almost immediately falls into the clutches of Monika, a beautiful photographer. With the help of her new mentor, Jodi quickly becomes a rising star—but when a skeleton from her past surfaces, her dream life crashes to a halt, and she slips into a world of parties, drugs, and high-class prostitution. ;
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Set in the crime-plagued New York City of the 1980s,Beautiful Garbageparallels an artist's journey with her sexual epiphanies, exploring the notorious milieu of the decade's downtown art scene from the point of view of a young female artist—and offering a satirical and irreverent look at post-'70s sexual politics and the world of elite call girls.
;A Brooklyn native, Jill Di Donato writes a sex column forThe Huffington Post. This is her debut novel. ;“An alluring story of New York nightlife and its seedy players.”
—Cat Marnell, VICE columnist

“Equal parts Patti Smith’sJust KidsandThe Diary of Anaïs Nin,Beautiful Garbageis a voyeuristic panorama of the vice and vanity of the downtown art scene in the 1980s.”
—Ivy Pochoda, author ofThe Art of DisappearingandVisitation Street

“Beautiful Garbageoffers up one woman’s tour of duty of a New York City consumed by art, sex, and ambition. By turns passionate, cruel, shocking, and engrossing, this is a novel steeped in the lure of glamour and transformation the Big Apple’s always had to offer.”
—Rachel Kramer Bussel, editor ofWomen in LustandFast GirllӉ