South Beach

I found this book amazing! Antoni's ability to weave people's lives together reminds me of Armistead Maupin, who is one of my favorites! The book's setting is perfect and you will instantly become involved in the character's lives! I found this book by chance, and I am extremely happy I did! I hope the author continues this story soon!!!

I read this book in one sitting. I could not put it down. I have been a frequent visitor to South Beach since the early 90's, and Antoni's novel perfectly captures all that is eccentric and unique about the place. He has the insider's keen eye for the detail and the subtlety. The book actually works on 3 levels. First, its a cool story about a young man whose vapid life is transformed by tragedy, and the mystery is whether or not he too can re-make himself in a place where countless others have come to re-make themselevs. He is a protgaonist you can care about. Second, the book is a great treat for those of us who love off-beat and unusual characters. You won't believe some of them. But they nonetheless ring true for anyone who knows the place. And finally, it is a wonderful story about a really fascinating and unique time and place (and it doesn't hurt that some of it is really "over the top" and edgy!). I loved it on all the levels. Oh and by the way, it has a happy ending. ;) Read it! Read it! Raed it!

As someone who was there from 1986 to 1998 and helped both publicize and destroy what was great about our unique deco sandbar, I was just overwhelmed by how Brian Antoni caught the early beach era. I actually cried when faux artist Marina read the real names of the dead in a performance piece- one was my hairdresser and another a good friend. The story, as wild as it seems, is true to heart.

What sets Brian Antoni among the upper echelon of novelists is his ability to capture the nuanced, visceral spirit of a particular time and place. He does this not merely by reciting details (although there is a wealth of detailed description here) but by infusing every word of his novel with the tangible feeling of what South Beach, the place, was like before it became "South Beach" the brand. If this were all Antoni had done, "South Beach" would be worth reading. But Antoni also populates this surprisingly tender and occasionally prurient novel with an unforgettable cast of characters, who would seem almost too interesting to be true if the author hadn't shown such a deft hand in making them feel real. You may never have met people quite this outrageous in your own life, but you'll relate to them. Antoni's characters live, love, and party to frequent excess, but also manage to create a close family-of-friends--and a nightlife/fashion scene that will gain worldwide infamy--in the process. There's eye-popping entertainment in these pages, but there's also emotional truth. In short, "South Beach: The Novel" is a terrific read, one that you'll be surprised to find still living with you days after you've finished the last page. I can't recommend it highly enough.

It's very tough to capture (in a bottle, in a novel) what happened in the late '80s and early '90s that made South Beach explode into the kind of playground of zillionaires it has become today. It always seemed to me that David Leddick was the only one to "get it right" with his "My Worst Date," published back in the mid-'90s when the bloom already was off the rose. But Brian Antoni gets it right in this new novel. He gives you a good taste of the relentlessly odd characters that peopled South Beach then. They had no money, but boy, were they colorful! Even the ones who were burned out you could see HAD lived, at least in the past. Rather unlike the suburban hoards descending on Lincoln Road and Ocean Drive every weekend, who don't know much about living at all. They've all followed the straight and narrow, and these days, sadly, the straight and narrow leads to South Beach. Like sheep padding into the abattoir. "Honey, why don't we stop at Starbucks for a cup of coffee before we go to Victoria's Secret to get you some lingerie that might be sexy enough for me not to watch The Tonight Show and then we'll go to Banana Republic to get some clothes for me for Casual Fridays at work?" Or the monied many in their haze of delusion hanging out in the cabanas at the Delano, Sagamore, Setai, et al. Or the ones paying those laughable prices at rip-off joints like Danny Devito's. You ask yourself: What are these people possibly THINKING? And you realize they just want a little bit of all they've heard about. Well, read Antoni's book, and I guarantee you NONE of the people today would have ANYTHING to do with the people in South Beach in those days. Antoni uses Gabriel, an outsider forced by circumstance to show up on South Beach to claim his one possession, a run-down apartment building. He becomes the Candide of Antoni's book, a picaresque character who encounters all the good (and bad) that South Beach offered in those days. Gabriel, the lucky one, finds true love (as well as redemption) in the arms of Marina, unlike so many of the characters surrounding him, unable to triumph over the various weaknesses that drew them into the deadly vortex that South Beach can be for the unwary. The truth is -- you STILL can find what you want on South Beach. You just have to be careful what you THINK you're looking for.