South Beach

October 15, 2007
Gabriel Tucker’s gargantuan trust fund has allowed him to spend his life traveling and partying, so he’s none too pleased to receive a letter informing him that his uncle has blown all the money in the trust, and the only thing Gabriel has left is a crumbling hotel on South Beach. Gabriel finds the Venus De Milo Arms inhabited by a lip-synching tranny, an AIDS-afflicted gossip columnist, an elderly woman obsessed with her wardrobe and a performance artist named Marina, whom Gabriel promptly falls in love with. Their lives intertwine along with those of a Cuban refugee-cum-supermodel and a fashion designer obsessed with making South Beach’s gaudy dilapidation the new chic. As Marina struggles with the past that keeps her from returning Gabriel’s affection and the Venus de Milo Arms is threatened with becoming the next pile of rubble on the road to progress, Gabriel starts to realize that the old hotel may be the only place in the world that he can call home. Antoni delights in describing in pornographic detail the absurdities of South Beach (drugs, sex, freakish locals), but he never gets beneath South Beach’s chipped veneer. The light treatment has its moments, but it isn’t quite satisfying.

February 15, 2008
Although its fanciful art deco buildings have fallen into disrepair, as have their now elderly denizens, South Beach suddenly gets its glow back. Brazen hedonism and celebrity mania are in full force whentrust-fund vagabond Gabriel Tucker arrives to claim all thats left of his inheritance. Not only does he own the dilapidated Venus de Milo Arms (Antoni tosses out jokes like a reveler throwing candy from a carnival float), he also acquires its endearing, if damaged, tenants. Theres Pandora, a mute rape-survivor transvestite; performance artist and cancer survivor Marina; gossip-columnist Skip, with full-blown AIDS; Mera, a Holocaust survivor and fairy-godmother bookie;and Jesus, a Cuban raft refugee turned fashion model. As they band together to help each other and save Venus de MiloArms from the wrecking ball, Antoni, long on the scene (his 10-page dedication is a veritable South Beach registry), mischievouslyand triumphantly combines explicit sexual encounters with keen, hilarious social commentary and genuine compassion to createa love letter to a crazy place and asweet tale of friendship, succor, and love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)