Jessica Hagedorn has won acclaim for exuberant novels that combine a strong narrative drive with a lyric sensibility in which pop culture and extravagant behavior thrive. Her ferociously entertaining new novel, Toxicology, centers on two women who are neighbors in Manhattan's West Village. Mimi Smith, a filmmaker whose only screen credit is a low-budget slasher movie, finds herself in desperate need of resuscitation for both her career and her downwardly spiraling life. Her neighbor, Eleanor Delacroix, is a legendary, scandalous literary figure, now nearing eighty and addicted to cocaine and alcohol.