Born with ambiguous gender, Cherry Beach's careening life trajectory has involved recreating him/herself many times and living on an endless succession of other peoples' couches. As another year draws to a close with a new crisis looming, Cherry trips across an improbable cache of winning lottery tickets that seems an answer to her prayers, propelling her into a mad slalom of greed which quickly attracts the denziens of her through-the-looking-glass nightclub demi-monde. By turns incredibly funny and deeply disturbing, Couchwarmer is a celebration of chaos, a riveting rollercoaster ride into a landscape of the 'acid Baroque.'

Greg Kramer is a director, actor, and writer. His two previous novels published by The Riverbank Press are The Pursemonger of Fugu and Couchwarmer. Hogtown Bonbons, his bi-weekly fiction column in Toronto's Xtra magazine, was published as a book in 2000. He lives in Montreal.

Greg Kramer's profile page

"This novel gleefully scratches at the underbelly of the urban postmodern to teach us two things: the emperor wears women's clothing, and a shadowland of gender ambiguity and slackerly anti-ambition is alive and well and living in Canada ... Kramer mythologizes a new nation of anti-heroes, and if nothing else, deserves a (dis)Order of Canada for proving that we can harbour disaffection as well as anyone else... Couchwarmer's plot is all about scratch 'n' wins and laundromats — little rewards reminding us that humanity comes bearing all kinds of labels."

Quill & Quire