British-born journalist Chris Ayres is assigned to an enviable beat for the Times of London: the glitz and glamour of Southern California, where the sky is "a cheerleader on antidepressants: blank-eyed, even-tempered, insistently optimistic." It is the early 2000s: The housing bubble has yet to burst, the economy has yet to crash. With deep pockets and full gas tanks, the citizens of L.A. are doing quite well indeed. Even the homeless carry cell phones.
But beyond the opulence of silicon starlets and silver Bentleys, in his new book "Death by Leisure" (Grove Press, 288 pages, $24), Ayres finds an uglier reality: wildfires, droughts, fault lines, mudslides. Between trips to the coffee shop and a series of failed dates with supermodels, he contemplates the connection between these natural disasters and the extravagant lifestyles of his fellow Angelenos.
The book hovers between memoir and reporting, never quite landing squarely in one camp or the other. Taken as a memoir, it's successful in telling the story of a Brit -- whose own northern England sky "is a brooding drunk, peeing into its trench coat, throwing up on the furniture, grumbling and spitting and raging and brawling, often all at the same time" -- who finds a home (and eventually much more) in sunny California. While Ayres' story is fun to read, the moments of reporting on global crises seem an afterthought.
Taken as a piece of journalism, Ayres begins with a fascinating premise but fails to deliver a hard-hitting look at the symbiosis between human indulgence and natural destruction. There's a lot of ground Ayres neglects to cover: For example, he never addresses the irony that although a glut of SUVs chokes its freeways daily, California is simultaneously a leader in forward-thinking environmental regulation.
The problem is that Ayres is far from being embedded in the fast-moving millionaire culture, as the jacket copy claims. Instead, he stalks the edges, occasionally crashing a billionaire's party or using his press pass as an invitation to exclusive openings. Mostly, he tries to impress women while racking up debt in record time -- plasma televisions, expensive facials, absurdly expensive meals. When he becomes desperate for cash, he sells the contents of his living room on Craigslist to make the rent. Ayres doesn't show us much more than what we might be able to experience ourselves had we moved to L.A. with a high credit card limit and a taste for expensive things.
Ayres' real strength lies in his self-deprecating wit and knack for placing himself in absurd situations. He garnered critical acclaim for his first book, "War Reporting for Cowards," which chronicles (with sardonic humor) his nine harrowing days as an embedded journalist in Iraq. While it may not entirely measure up, "Death by Leisure" is, nonetheless, an entertaining romp through life in Los Angeles. In the end, Ayres is an able storyteller whose gift for dialogue and razor-sharp wit make this worth the read.
Kim Schmidt also reviews for Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle and BookPage. She lives in Illinois.
