Margins
Depraved Indifference book cover
Depraved Indifference
1969
First Published
4.00
Average Rating
336
Number of Pages

Gary Indiana, a "huge satirical talent" ( New York Times ), brings us a darkly comic novel fueled by the virtuoso con artist Evangeline Slote and her extravagant life of chicanery and petty crime. She thrives on seduction, manipulation, and the humiliation of everybody in her orbit. And she has a genius for generating chaos and panic among her real and imaginary enemies. Until her conviction on slavery charges brought against her by several ungrateful Mexican housemaids, Evangeline, a dead ringer for Elizabeth Taylor, lives in perpetual motion. She and her husband, Warren, a self-made real estate mogul at the end of a long alcoholic decline, breezily shift from Las Vegas to Hawaii to Nassau, torching their homes for insurance money, dabbling in myriad forms of financial fraud, and constantly altering their identities to evade the law. When Warren dies, Evangeline is desperate to jump-start yet another new life, bankrolled by Warren's far-flung and hard-to-locate assets, while keeping his death secret from the world at large, but particularly from his "former children," her stepchildren and the beneficiaries of his will. Fortunately, she has an eager accomplice in Devin, her fanatically devoted and easily manipulated son. Surrounded by a cohort of burnouts, hapless suckers, and fellow grifters, Evangeline cooks up the ultimate con. To complete the intricate scheme, she will stop at nothing, including murder. Depraved Indifference is a dissection of the mind of a charismatic sociopath and a satire of the society that appeases and abets her. With razor-fine insight, Gary Indiana, "one of the most important chroniclers of the modern psyche," ( The Guardian ) wields his scathing, insightful prose with authority and to devastating effect.

Avg Rating
4.00
Number of Ratings
112
5 STARS
35%
4 STARS
40%
3 STARS
18%
2 STARS
4%
1 STARS
3%
goodreads

Author

Gary Indiana
Gary Indiana
Author · 17 books
Gary Indiana is a critic and novelist. His most recent books include I Can Give You Anything But Love, a memoir, and Tiny Fish That Only Want To Kiss, a collection of short fiction. His writing has appeared in New York Magazine, The New York Times, Vice, the London Review of Books, and many other publications.
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