SEXUAL COMEDY Roger Fishbite
Emily Prager (Chatto & Windus £10) * it at *
Roger Fishbite resets Lolita for the century's end, inverting Nabokov‘s great work by telling it from the perspective of an abused preo teenage girl left open and adrift in our jumbled talk show. tabloid age. The book is the memoir of one Lucky Underhoff, now thirteen. retelling the events that have led to her incarceration for the second- degree murder of the eponymous Roger. the man with the down- turned mouth and the dead fisheyes who has married and supplanted her mother. Lucky’s
E M 1 LY P R A G E R voice has both the confused pink- . ’ ~
ribboned magic of a child and a ._.
knowing, brash precocity - yet Prager's novel is one that leaves a reader troubled about using words like 'precocious'.
Though billed as ‘a dazzling sexual comedy for our times' and adorned in one of the those ubiquitous girls-in-sunglasses covers. Roger Fishbite is a hugely serious book. Prager, whose writing here is precisely weighted and flawlessly assembled, has constructed a novel burning with a raw, cold rage - reminiscent of the scene in Wild At Heart where Laura Dern is left in choking disbelief at the engulfing torrent of horrOr pouring from her car radio talk shows and news reports.
It is also very funny. The scene where Lucky and friends stage some open- air theatre in protest at the child-sex trade in Thailand is a case in point. But the humour produces a queasy smile, soon wiped from the face. This is an important little book and easy to get through but one that makes for some very uneasy reading. (Damien Love)
Waterstone’s Edinburgh
perhaps the archetypal American writer. His work, with its simple expressions and structures, enacts the democratic and populist ideals which are the greatest attributes of that nauon.
This excellent collection was chosen by Hughes and originally published in 1959, but has been out of print for many years. Selected Poems spans his career from the early 20s to the late 605 and includes his best known works such as ’The Negro Speaks Of Rivers’ and ’Montage Of A Dream Deferred’.
Hughes articulated the black American experience throughout the Depression, the rise of the civil rights movement and the race riots, distilling hard times into beautiful and stirring poetry. His best work such as ’Trumpet Player’ and ’Song For Billie Holiday’ echoes popular music. In his writing, I like that of the blues and jazz musicians he was inspired by, ’trouble mellows to a golden note.’ (PR) I
BRITLIT ROMANCE ; Come Together '
Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees (Arrow £5.99) * ‘k
What a minefield 90s relationships are.
predictable relationship trajectory of Amy and Jack, two insipid twentysomethings hellbent on fulfilling every cliché ever foistered upon their genders and generation. Lloyd and Rees got a staggering advance for coming up with the wheeze that he writes the boy’s bits and she writes the girl’s bits - any attempt at innovation stops there. It’s fluffy and entertaining enough, but look deeper and you will find reactionary politics dressed up as counter-culture cool. (HM)
All those poor girls striving to hide their incompetence in the workplace, not to mention their cellulite, when all they really want to do is procreate. And all those feckless Loaded lads in need of taming. One might almost suspect the writers I
of this kind of flashy, trashy Britlit of I Continued over page being incognito churchmen and MP5 of
a back-to-basics bent, intent on * ***STAR R‘gINGSd k . . . at utstan ing t £90109 UdDStandWOVT‘f?“ \f’hO tn'rlk I **** Recommended ey re in epen ent irm y in t eir i but worth a try places. ** 50'” Here we follow the wearin * Poor
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4—18 Feb 1999 THEM”