Will I love Hating Olivia?

Another classic novel about ordinary working-class Americans. This time, it is set in the 1970s and 80s.

Hating Olivia is a brutal love-hate relationship between two people seemingly hell-bent on destroying each other. This is the first of Safranko’s Max Zajack novels and is arguably the best. Zajack meanders from one dead-end job to another whilst battling it out with his lover, the eponymous Olivia, in a series of New York apartments.

I loved it from page one, it’s descriptions of working and socialising in the Big Apple, are devastatingly authentic, and it’s obvious the author has lived this life… show more.

Max Zajack's life is cheap rooms, dead-end jobs, and suicidal fantasies until he meets the alluring and mysterious Olivia Aphrodite, and everything goes to hell.

Max is a struggling musician and wannabe writer. His life is in a rut until one night, while playing a gig at a local club, he gazes out into the crowd and sees Olivia. Before long, they are sharing a bed and host of dark vices that begin to consume them. Their love turns toxic, sending them spiraling downward toward the inevitable. Violently romantic, viscerally honest, Hating Olivia is the story of two loners… show more.