Hating Olivia

"The scenes between Max and his lady love are open heart surgery done with an ax. If you're a Henry Miller or Bukowski fan, [this novel] is fresh meat." —Dan Fante, author of Chump Change Max Zajack's life is in a rut, filled with cheap rooms, dead end jobs and suicidal fantasies. Then he meets the alluring and mysterious Olivia Aphrodite. Max and Olivia dive headfirst into a powerful relationship fueled by insatiable desire for each other, both physically and mentally. But Olivia has a dark side-one that is exacerbated by the need to make ends meet. Olivia's erratic behavior and secretive nature cause Max to become more and more obsessive and soon their relationship becomes toxic and they plunge into a downward spiral of mutual destruction. "A book of quiet horrors and beautifully expressed longing. . . . SaFranko's prose is precise, flawless." —Tony O'Neill, author of Sick City and Down and Out on Murder Mile "Safranko. . . . attaches a powerful message to an often painfully familiar story, about the individual versus the collective, the struggle to maintain the dream, and the importance of getting back up no matter how many times you fall." — Booklist ""SaFranko's prose is enthusiastically profane . . . as a narrator Max is engaging, funny and full of straight-talk. . . . SaFranko has a talent for two-fisted, Bukowski-esque prose . . ." — Kirkus Reviews