Unfortunately, I will be unable to continue my reviews of girls, as I seem to have destroyed my copy in a fit of rage.

(Let’s just say the plot was full of holes.)

It was that dig at Lolita that finally did it.  When your first novel is a blatant knock-off of another, much better-known, book, it’s probably not a good idea to throw in sneering references halfway through.  It’s not even as if Lolita’s one of my favourite books, but there’s a reason that it’s considered a Twentieth Century classic while girls was on sale for £1.99 in The Works less than two years after its first printing.  For one thing, Vladimir Nabokov actually gave his characters names.

Beyond that, I just couldn’t stomach another moment in this strange parallel world where justice and compassion are a myth, nothing is more important than money and power, and all men secretly want to go to bed with twelve-year-olds.*  I suppose you could interpret my giving up as evidence for J.T. LeRoy’s quote about the razorblades pressing in too close, but, by that logic, the same is true of YouTube comment sections, because I’ve given up reading those as well.  Saying the most infuriating thing you can possibly think of doesn’t automatically make you worth listening to.

I’m sure that, at some point in the last sixty pages, there was some kind of plot twist in which Hubert and Business Cat realised exactly how moronic everything they’d said, done and thought so far truly was, but it had got well past the point where it would have been worth it.  Quite apart from the horrible characters, the book was a load of pretentious wank that seemed to think that disconnected musings about anything that came to mind was the same thing as being profound.  People make fun of E.L. James for essentially publishing her fanfic, but I think Nic Kelman might have essentially published his dream journal.

My only regret is that I now have no excuse to post any more of my silly mouse drawings.  But I’m sure I’ll survive.

 

*True, I am not myself a man, nor can I read their minds, so I don’t have any definite proof that they don’t.  But I’d say that, in a case like that, the burden of proof is really on the person making the claim, wouldn’t you?