Brass - Softcover

Walsh, Helen

3.39

890 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841954845 ISBN 13: 9781841954844

Publisher: Canongate Books, 2004

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Nineteen-year-old Millie O'Reilley is, clever, spiky and adored by men - yet utterly forlorn. Even though she has the devotion of her professor father, Jerry, and the respect of the hard-knocks in South Liverpool, Millie feels a sense of growing alienation. Increasingly disillusioned with her University course and fellow students, she seeks an escape in the underbelly of Liverpool's Cathedral area - home to crackheads, pimps, pushers and, most intriguing to Millie, whores. And when an encounter with a world weary prostitute turns into an after hours odyssey of drink fuelled self-abuse it, ultimately, leads Millie toward questioning who she is and what she wants to get out of life. Shockingly candid, brutally poetic, Helen Walsh has created a portrait of a city and a generation that offers a female perspective on the harsh truth of growing up in today's Britain. Brass is an unsettling but ultimately compassionate account of the possibilities of identity and the desirability of love.

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Review:

"Helen Walsh's first novel, Brass...has the best--as in the most honestly and evocatively described...sex of any contemporary fictious sex I've read....You forget how rare it is to find a heroine who acts the predator and not the victim, who gets to make the jokes rather than feed the lines to the joker."

From the Back Cover:

"The most striking coming-of-age story that I have read for a long time . . . Helen Walsh is up there with Irvine Welsh in her ability to show what it is that draws people to the extremes of pleasure." Natasha Walter, Vogue

Nineteen-year-old Millie O'Reilly is clever, spiky and adored by men, but feels increasingly trapped. She seeks escape in the hedonistic underbelly of Liverpool, getting off on rough sex and cheap highs.

Shockingly candid and brutally poetic, Helen Walsh has created a portrait both of a city and a generation, offering a female perspective on the harsh truth of growing up in today's Britain.

"A novel whose imagery you won't easily scrub off the back of your mind. It is spellbinding and utterly unique." Independent
"An incredibly uplifting experience . . . You wouldn't say the future of mainstream fiction was exactly safe in her hands, but it'll certainly be more adult, more comic, more eventful." Guardian
"Walsh has a gift for creating character through voice . . . To use an image that both protagonist and author would enjoy, these are the budding breasts of a voluptuous talent." The Times
"Something of ferocious power . . . Helen Walsh is not going to be a major and interesting new voice; she already is one." Niall Griffiths

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