Fiction. "No contemporary novelist has plumbed so deeply into the human heart, and none has paid a steeper price for visiting those depths than John O'Brien. BETTER shows us what America lost when the author of Leaving Las Vegas took his own life. Unflinching, dark-souled, cry-until-you-laugh authentic ... each word of this novel burns as true and doomed as a lit match dropped in a shot of whiskey. John O'Brien was a writer who lived and died with every sentence. BETTER is testament to the miracle of what the man accomplished--and what he might have accomplished had not death seemed like a better alternative. No one who reads this book will walk away unmoved"--Jerry Stahl. "John O'Brien was a stunningly talented writer who created poetry from the most squalid material"--Jay McInerney.

Author City: LOS ANGELES, CA USA

John O'Brien was born in 1960 and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He moved to Los Angeles in 1982 with then-wife Lisa. During his lifetime, he was a busboy, file clerk, and coffee roaster, but writing was his true calling. He committed suicide in April 1994 at age thirty-three. His published fiction includes Leaving Las Vegas, The Assault on Tony's, and Stripper Lessons.