Although the novel lacks any real perspective on America's repeated falls from grace, her giddy highs and crushing lows make for a refreshingly honest and eye-opening read.Moon Zappa is one of the richest Rock Singer & listed on most popular Rock Singer. They knew what I was talking about.' It's hard not to enjoy America's attitude and observational powers, but the novel is also exasperatingly self-indulgent: song lyrics open every chapter, and too often they're inexcusably facile choices like ' 'Why?' Annie Lennox' or 'Hooray for Hollywood' Author Unknown' (that would be Johnny Mercer, by the way).

Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Gandhi, and that guy with all the grapes. Her aggrandized notion of her own hardships is often patently hilarious: 'we drove past a mural of anguished faces and raised fists. The novel reads like an obsessive, bipolar journal of disaster and heartache: America is dumped by her artist boyfriend, Jasper, which launches her on a hell-bent roller-coaster ride of self-loathing and self-discovery. But the biographical parallels are obvious enough that it's unclear whether Zappa really wants readers to believe America is a fictional character. The novel concerns one America Throne, the opinionated daughter of famous avant-garde artist Boris Throne: she's funny, she's familiar with self-pity, she's looking for love and she's dealing with 'how difficult it is to be hippie royalty AND try to find your own identity in the shadow of a certifiable self-made 'genius.' ' For those who haven't heard of Zappa's father, Frank, the legendary composer and front man of the Mothers of Invention, it's pointless to attempt to explain him here. Skeptics, prepare for a surprise: this is an energetic and mostly entertaining debut, a novel only Moon Unit Zappa could have written. Hailed as 'brilliant' ( Sunday Telegraph Magazine), America the Beautiful is the debut of an unforgettable and unfaltering new voice. In America the Beautiful, Moon Zappa has taken the broken-heart story and given it a twist all her own through the emotional honesty and edginess of America Throne. From a dodgy therapist to a silent retreat, America Throne's 'aha' moment culminates with, 'While we are all busy swimming upstream, the universe is conspiring to take us to something better.' But just as soon as they've realized domestic bliss, Jasper has a change of heart, and America falters on the slippery slope of hope: hoping that he will come back, hoping that new sex will erase all evidence of him, and hoping that in nurturing a truce with her dead father she will make peace with all men.Īmerica's trip from self-destruction to wholeness is a romp on the wilder shores of the West Coast. Her career is sprouting, and she is in love - with Jasper Husch, a sexy-sultry artist from San Fran. America Throne is living the good life in L.A.

America the beautiful moon zappa