Tarantula Woman

Front Cover
Open Books, Jan 23, 2011 - Fiction
Located across the U.S.-Mexican border in Ciudad Juarez, Mariscal Street (otherwise known as the Boulevard of Broken Dreams) harbors Donald O'Donovan's quintessential character, Jerzy Mulvaney, as he unsuccessfully courts the Tarantula Woman—a prostitute named Ysela with a tattoo of a tarantula on her left shoulder blade. She is just one of many women in one man's unapologetic and aimless existence in Mexico where each day brings another round of whorehouses, drunken stupors, odd jobs, eruptions of violence and encounters with equally directionless individuals.Not since Charles Bukowski's Factotum has a transgressive autobiographical novel touched upon with such rawness the everyday realities of a modern-day American desperado. Yet somewhere in the midst of all the strident nihilism, O'Donovan's alter ego, Jerzy Mulvaney, manages to stumble upon an ambition of sorts: to become a real Mexican. “I wanted to destroy whatever remained of my identity, my American identity; to melt down into a primal being, because the greatest thing is to be unknown, anonymous, and truly free.†Rather than a work of fiction, Tarantula Woman is a refreshingly honest document that subtly addresses such essential subjects as life, love, death and the challenge of simply being.
 

Contents

CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2011)

Donald O'Donovan is an optioned screenwriter and voice actor with film and audio book credits. He was born in Cooperstown, New York. A teenage runaway, O'Donovan rode freights, traveled the US, joined the army to get off the street, lived in Mexico, and worked at more than 200 occupations including long distance truck driver, undertaker and roller skate repairman. The first draft of Night Train was written on 23 yellow legal pads while the author was homeless in the streets of Los Angeles. Donald O'Donovan recently narrated the documentary film, The Forgotten, produced and directed by Sarem Yadegari. His screenplay, Cutter's Woods, is a semi-finalist in the 2009 FilmStream Screenplay Competition.

Bibliographic information