I have three confessions to make.
The first is I’ve never read Kathy Acker. This is probably my loss.
The second is you probably need to have read Kathy Acker to enjoy Crudo, which is written in Kathy’s voice.
The third is I had no idea what Crudo was about when I bought it. Instead, I simply did what I normally do in a bookshop: read the first two pages and, if I don’t shudder in disgust, buy the book.
One-sentence review: Haunting, confusing, beautiful and yet tenebrous.
One-sentence review: If you know and like Richard Ayoade’s unique sense of humour, this is for you.
One-sentence review: Wry, dry (even though it’s set in a rainy Canadian city) and moving.
One-sentence review: Pure, unadulterated hedonistic literary escapism.
One-sentence review: A quiet, thoughtful and seductive look into other people’s fears and relationships.
One-sentence review: like a PG Wodehouse comedy but with a darker edge.
One-sentence review: A jaw-droppingly brilliant comic novel.
One-sentence review: languorous, mysterious and evocative with a dark twist.
A young woman uncertain of herself is in a coastal Spanish town so she can take her cranky hypochondriac mother to a specialist who might be a crank himself.
In some ways this is a coming-of-age novel, as Sofia falls in love with the mysterious and imperious Ingrid, has blissful love-free sex with the young man who treats jellyfish stings at the beach, and she contemplates what to do with her anthropology studies while using anthropology as a frame with which to study her confusing world.
One-sentence review: A caustic tale of modern life, with its alienation, bad friends and dreams of self improvement.
As children, we often think books ought to be about larger than life characters: adventurers, royalty, vampires and magicians.
Yet when we’re older and our dreams of becoming rock stars, professional athletes or Hollywood actors have dissolved, it’s the life-size characters that often resonate: the office worker, the lonely, the depressed and – in the case of The New Me, it’s all three.