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Book Summary and Reviews of Paint It Black by Janet Fitch

Paint It Black by Janet Fitch

Paint It Black

by Janet Fitch

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  • Sep 2006, 400 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Josie Tyrell, art model, teen runaway, and denizen of LA's 1980 punk rock scene, finds a chance at real love with art student Michael Faraday. A Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist, Michael introduces her to his spiritual quest and a world of sophistication she had never dreamed existed. But when she receives a call from the Los Angeles County Coroner, asking her to identify her lover's dead body, her bright dreams all turn to black.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Fitch excels at painting a negative personality with sure-handed depth and fairness, and her prose penetrates the inner lives of the two with immediacy and bite." - PW.

"Suspenseful, compelling, and superbly crafted, this work shows Fitch once again taking the art of writing to its highest level." - Library Journal.

"Vivid writing here and there, but Josie is a dull character, and the story is a real downer." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Paint It Black was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Janice Y

Paint it Black
Dear Ms. Fitch:
Living in South Dakota where there are miles and miles between places I pass the long rides away by listening to many books on CD. When done I donate them to the library or exchange them with others.

I recently purchased your “Paint it Black” story. I am not a prude and will over look an occasional F word but I couldn’t get through even one CD without hearing the F word too many times.(at least 50 to 100 times) I ejected it and will pitch the whole book.

Your story is probably very good but why would you feel it necessary to use the F word so many times?

I sure hope you are not teaching others that they can use it as an easy way to fill pages. Do you get paid by the word?

I do not mean to criticize but most people don’t talk this way and would prefer not to read or hear it over and over.

The kerplunk you hear is the sound of the audio book landing in the trash.

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Author Information

Janet Fitch Author Biography

Janet Fitch was born in Los Angeles, a third-generation native, and grew up in a family of voracious readers. As an undergraduate at Reed College, Fitch had decided to become an historian, attracted to its powerful narratives, the scope of events, the colossal personalities, and the potency and breadth of its themes. But when she won a student exchange to Keele University in England, where her passion for Russian history led her, she awoke in the middle of the night on her twenty-first birthday with the revelation she wanted to write fiction. "I wanted to Live, not spend my life in a library. Of course, my conception of being a writer was to wear a cape and have Adventures."

Fitch has published short stories in literary journals such as A Room of One's Own, briefly attended film school ...

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