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Overview
A bar in Liverpool, January 2nd 2000: Kelly and Victor, both coming down from the recent global party, meet, and some time later that night they are in her bed. The story of Kelly and Victor progresses, through two mirror-image narratives—a story of the growth and spiralling intensity of a sexual obsession, traced to its inevitable, devastating conclusion. Set against a backdrop of urban despair, spiritual absence and a world swamped with pornography, this is a novel about yearning for union, for purity, and for magic and mystery in a world that denies them all.
Synopsis
A bar in Liverpool, January 2nd 2000: Victor meets Kelly. Later that night, he’s in her bed. They both think it’s the best sex they’ve ever had. So the story of Kelly + Victor progresses, through two mirror–image narratives: a story of growth and the spiraling intensity of a sexual obsession, traced to its inevitable, devastating conclusion. Set against a backdrop of urban despair and a world swamped with pornography, this is a novel about longing—for union, for purity, for magic and mystery in a world that denies them all. Niall Griffiths has been widely hailed as one of the best young writers in Britain; he is the author of Grits and Sheepshagger, which Publishers Weekly called “amazing… a chilling portrait nearly mythological in its intensity.”
Library Journal
Griffiths's latest novel, following on the heels of Grits and Sheepshagger, is sure to delight those looking for a contemporary Romeo & Juliet full of gritty "reality," bondage, toilet-stall drugs, and hard, explicit sex. It is the story of two star-crossed lovers who meet in a bar in Liverpool and embark on a strung-out, sadomasochistic relationship destined from its inception for disaster. In his raw, accessible, and quick-paced language, Griffith shows that he has an ear for his characters' vernacular storytelling, which swoops and falls with the existential melodrama of a drug trip. But while he captures some of the violence and desperation of wandering aimlessly through a life where the nicest people are bartenders, he fails to get under the skin of this despair or go beyond its descriptive exploitation. In the book's most potent scene, Kelly carves its title into an unsuspecting Victor's back. One only wishes that this painful illustration of the desire to leave a lasting and possessive mark in a deadened world might apply more readily to Griffiths's own writing. Even the profuse and lurid sex scenes fall flaccid all too soon, devoid of the erotic imagination found in a book like Nicholson Baker's Vox. Nonetheless, this work will undoubtedly enjoy cult status among a certain generation for its shock value.-Prudence Peiffer, Cambridge, MA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.