Not Enough Sex, Not Enough Rage

At the beginning of February, I decided to change up the love stories I’d read in honor of Valentine’s Day. I didn’t want to lean into the traditional love story: I wanted pain, gore, heartbreak. I’m clearly a romantic. In my search for books that fit the bloody bill, I came across Sex and Rage, a fictional memoir of sorts by Eve Babitz, recalling her 20s in 1970s Los Angeles. I hope you enjoy this review and use it to shape the future love stories you add to your tbr!

The OG Not So Valley Girl

We meet Jacaranda in the waves of Santa Monica as a young teenage girl. Sun kissed and naive, she has her first dalliances with men throughout the LA landscape. Each man takes on a bright, bold, and caricatured personality, all from wildly different backgrounds. None of them inspire healthy examples of love. As Jacaranda navigate her newfound adulthood, she is forced to shed her naivete, but does so in the form of self-harming vices: sex, drugs, and hot-blooded relationships. With no end in sight, Jacaranda finally abandons Los Angeles, uprooting herself in favor of New York. At 28 with a blossoming writing career on the horizon, will Jacaranda finally shed her poor habits of her early 20s and finally reach the potential that a cast of characters has recognized her since her teen years on the beaches of Santa Monica?

I envisioned Jacaranda as an early 2000s Hollister poster child. Long Beachy brunette waves and sun kissed skin, Jacaranda personifies SoCal surf culture effortlessly. She’s never in a rush; opportunities come to her in a manner that only happens for conventionally attractive people. She is vapid and uninspired, relying so heavily on her looks, she never develops a true personality. Her Southern California identity is Jacaranda’s only source of authenticity. Jacaranda is neither likable or unlikable. She simply exists.

Some readers might look for this quality in a book, where the main character isn’t exactly compelling or groundbreaking. He or she just goes about their business, and we assume the days of the book are just their normal days. Personally, I want my main character to do something, anything! They don’t need to become a hero. Neither do they need to go on a self-reflective, emotionally exhausting character development. But I do want plot points that I can specifically point to. I want them to try new things, grow, fail, maybe succeed? But it should feel like I’m going on a journey with this character hand in hand, and I didn’t get that from Jacaranda.

The Jacaranda at the beginning of the book is the exact same as Jacaranda at the end of the book. She is self- involved emotionally volatile and dangerous 2 all of her most important relationships. At any point in time, you’re waiting for her friends and boyfriends to drop her from their lives due to her own shitty behavior. I argue the only reason these people stay in her life is because of her conventional attractiveness, her lore of being a published author, and the threat that she might one day write an ugly story about them. The money and access to recreational drugs is just a bonus.

How to Keep From Drowning

I still don’t understand the symbolism behind the barge. For half of the book, I thought the barge was a nickname of someone’s home or a social club or gathering that Jacaranda and all of her friends would frequent. By the end of the book, it seems to be much more metaphorical. But that metaphor isn’t fully developed either. Is the barge Jacaranda’s struggles with addiction? Is the barge a metaphor for her emotional stability? When she is on the barge is she stable or unstable because at different points of the book we get different answers.

One relationship I do wish we had further insight into is Jacaranda’s relationship with her sister, April. April is only ever depicted on the fringes of Jacaranda’s life, and yet she knows enough about the central characters to express strong held opinions. She is truly a voice of reason, because her reads on all of Jacaranda’s boyfriends, male acquaintances, and associates are dead on. Yet in Sex and Rage, we never explore the dynamic of how April perceives these individuals to form these judgments.

Maybe this is my personal bias as a sister myself, and hindsight truly is 2020, but if Jacaranda really wanted to change or at least improve her life, she would have learned more into her relationship with April. But this begs the question does Jacaranda want to change? She knows that she has damaging behaviors, yet she really doesn’t vocalize wanting to do anything about them. It sounds like I’ve placed a bit too much stock in my own title of sister, much more than Jacaranda put in April.

The Lackluster Legend of Max

The legend of Max is still up in the air for me. His sexuality aside, Jacaranda’s morbid fascination with him felt half baked. She often mentions that Max is prone to vile and hurtful outbursts, but we only ever get a hint of sass. He never outright attacks Jacaranda the way her mind has led her to believe he does, so it’s hard to get a pulse check on his true character. I tried to exclude Max’s sexuality from my argument, but I feel like it plays a huge role in Jacaranda’s perception of him.

At first, I thought she was a scorned schoolgirl whose crush would never reciprocate her feelings. Then I wondered if because Max wasn’t sexually attracted to Jacaranda the way most men are. Was there an element of jealousy in Jacaranda’s perception of Max? Max lived unapologetically. Of all the novel’s characters, he is most true to himself. Even the legend gossips made him into fits him. He is believable. As Jacaranda seeks her own identity, I can’t help but wonder if she envied Max’s unabashed ability to be himself.

For nothing happening in the plot line of Max and Jacaranda’s relationship, there sure was an excessive amount of tension on their relationship. This was the only true rage we see in the book. Sure, you can make the argument that Jacaranda lashes out against all her boyfriends. None carry the volatility towards which she views her relationship with Max. For there being no sex between them, there sure was a lot of rage.

“Alexa, Play 20 Something By SZA”

Now for the damn title. There was nowhere near enough sex nor rage to fit my appetite. I am a bit too carnivorous for my own good. I was expecting to read a book about a woman navigating her sexual identity, sexual experiences, and emotional responses. Instead, we were left with a dreamlike stream of consciousness that had no start, no climax, and no end. Still, I think this is a story worth reading.

As critical as I’ve been up to this point about Jacaranda and her lack of character development, I do have hope for her by the novel’s conclusion.  Sonia is one of the only positive influences in Jacaranda’s life. Their final conversation elicits a newfound zest for life and optimism that Jacaranda was previously lacking. The momentum from her upcoming book release and Sonia’s life anecdotes seem to light a flame in Jacaranda to dig beyond the surface of her conventional looks and tap into the deeper elements of her soul.

Like Jacaranda, many women entering adulthood have no clue who they are supposed to be. Do I fit the mold that society has set for me, or do I make my own path? There is so much self-reflection and discovery required. Jacaranda bares her journey before us. This is exactly what our 20’s are for: figuring out who we are and who we want to become with minimal consequences for our mistakes. Nothing really matters when you’re 21, 25, even 29.

While her path is not one I would take, it’s still a valuable learning experience to see another woman face the same battles of becoming who she wants in the world. Sometimes it’s just as valuable to know how you don’t want to proceed versus how you do.  To see a woman live so vivaciously and by her own set of rules, I truly believe Jacaranda’s time in New York forced her to turn over a new leaf. Going forward, I myself would like to see a lot more sex, and a lot less rage.