Mazola1's review
No Man's Land by Ruth Fowler
No Man's Land is the memoir of a British Cambridge graduate with aspirations of being a writer who does a turn as a stripper in New York. It's a fairly unpleasant book, full of nasty little stories and ugly little descriptions that make everything from a cup of coffee to sex seem unbearably sordid.
The writing is sometimes interesting and edgy, but mostly it smacks of trying too hard to be original and gritty, almost to the point of seeming to be a self-conscious parody of Joycean stream of consciousness. It's littered with stuff which seems more pretentious and forced than creative and original. Like this: "The climax is a little death, that long awaited, never-talked about spatter of liquid dissemination," and this: "People from the past always turn up again in New York, circle around like fetid water in a blocked sink, a scuzz of oil, a jism of grease."
Or this passage, which could serve as a metaphor for the entire book: "I turn abruptly, walk ove...more
The writing is sometimes interesting and edgy, but mostly it smacks of trying too hard to be original and gritty, almost to the point of seeming to be a self-conscious parody of Joycean stream of consciousness. It's littered with stuff which seems more pretentious and forced than creative and original. Like this: "The climax is a little death, that long awaited, never-talked about spatter of liquid dissemination," and this: "People from the past always turn up again in New York, circle around like fetid water in a blocked sink, a scuzz of oil, a jism of grease."
Or this passage, which could serve as a metaphor for the entire book: "I turn abruptly, walk ove...more
