Customer Reviews

Brass

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Having received this book for Christmas, I was immediately intrigued by the back cover description and I read this book voraciously until I was finished. It is a brilliant effort by Walsh, full of interesting dialogue, English slang and perverse sexual descriptions. Being American I wasn't used to all of the working class slang but it can be deciphered on context and it is written phonetically. It's like Trainspotting in its raw and visceral feel. Thoroughly entertaining and a little autobiographical I can assume by the acknowledgements. It is totally a guilty pleasure with some of Milli's explicit dialogue and perverse desires. This is not for the prudish at heart. Recommended for all of the sexually and chemically adventurous... Looking forward to Walsh's next effort!

This is a striking book; it's very disturbing, erotic, depraved, and dark.
Millie's story is startling, sexually depraved, frenetic, and self destructive. Once her mother leaves her father and her to fend for themselves, it all changes dramatically for her. She shuts down and lives in her thoughts, hating everything and everyone. She loses herself and runs away from reality every chance she gets and she cannot stop herself, she just cannot stop.
She learns that she is gay when she finds a pornographic magazine on her best buddy's room, she checks the pictures of a couple of women together and it changes everything for her forever.
She needs depravity to get turned on and she looks for filthy corners and hookers, she looks for women perched on window sills doing nothing, just waiting for the men that are used to paying for sex; they are waiting to sell their bodies and their souls, and Millie loves it, she loves the depravity of it all and craves for it as much as she craves for cocaine, ecstasy and the love of Jamie, her best buddy.
This is a story of a girl who grows up too fast once her mother is gone and who has no limits set to her, she can do as she pleases, she can stay the night wherever she wants and she is throwing away her chance at a career. She is blowing everything away.
Raw, a story of queer predilections, bad choices, and the descent into a life of hedonism, loneliness, and dark days with darker nights; I can only recommend it to those who like ruthless books, crude awakenings and profound stories, there is nothing shallow or superficial about this book and I liked it for that, it's real, unpleasant, and unashamed.

When I started to read this it had a certain optimism. The heroine, nineteen year old Millie, who is from a well educated millieu, is at university but doesn't care much for her studies. Her reaction to the splitting up of her parents has obviously tipped her into chaos and she reacts to this by befriending a gang of working class Liverpudlean lads and their families. She seeks a warmth that is lacking in her own family. And so far, this is commendable, but unfortunately this does not solve any of her problems. Apart from a pretty serious coke and E habit she indulges in what can only be described as seriously deranged sexual practices and is constantly compelled to sleep with prostitutes and on one occasion to stay at a prostitute's house in order to insert bottles into various orifices.

After a while of such hard core events you'd think the reader would become numb, but no. I felt more and more sick, and this is certainly credit to the author, but I just felt so sorry for Millie, I really did, and I just felt there wasn't much hope for her. Let me say, Walsh is a brilliant writer, her descriptions are so real they make you totally get under Millie's skin, but by the same token, the hyper-reality of her style swiftly made me nauseous. This is like A Clockwork Orange but far more real and while I have the feeling it will become some kind of literary classic, I'm afraid that all in all it was too rich for my stomach.

I usually read books in about two days..this one I savored for a week. Each line is dramatic, each description is thought out..Helen makes you feel as though you are reading her thoughts. Not for the faint at heart! great book, impressive...I am a fan!

If you are easily offended, this book is not for you. But if you are a fan of sexually-charged realist literature--from Bukowski to Henry Miller to Anais Nin--you might enjoy "Brass." The setting is Liverpool, England. The location is unusual, but at the very least, it shows that people in Liverpool don't just talk about the Beatles having got their start there. As with many Americans, they are leading aimless, anxious lives. Liverpool is described as dangerous, but also exciting. Millie, the protagonist, lives one never ending all-nighter, filled with boozing, whoring, and suicidal hangovers. As far as depictions of English nightlife go, "Brass" has the feel of the "Madchester" days of plentiful drugs and intense partying. Millie is a young college girl who is smart, but doing badly in school, independent but also self-destructive. Her lifestyle, however, is not depicted in a world free of consequences. Her hard living takes a physical as well as pyschological toll. She is about to crack up if she doesn't find her way. At one point, Walsh has a virtuoso scene where Millie is rummaging through her home to find a cigarette so that she can get relief from a feeling that she'll never come down from the drugs she took. A sociologist might say that she is one of the victims of post-feminist society: Millie seems incapable of a normal seuxal relationship. Others would simply say that she's messed up. The book is loaded with sex, drinking, and drug-taking. But I didn't find it a downer or immoral. It's about what many young people go through: intense bouts of anxiety that they only feel drinking, drugs, and sex can combat. In an age of so much gutless writing, Walsh does what many writers are too scared to do: she takes big risks. She went for broke her first time out. But unlike many other risky authors, she has the technical skill and intellectual gifts to make her book literature and not just entertainment. One is not likely to come away with a so-so reaction to her book. Judging from the reviews posted here, they will love it or hate it. This is Walsh's first book, and it is amazing. Honest, fast-paced, and compelling.

This might be a little graphic for some, but "Brass" is a great read. Helen Walsh really does have a way with language,which is so descriptive but not overbearingly so. Millie, the main character of this book, is a very flawed narrator, but you just want to keep on reading about her, just to see what happpens next. Walsh's characters(even the minor ones) are memorable and you care about what happens to them, even if you disagree with their decisions(and Millie makes plenty of those in the book). So, give "Brass" a read, and discover this hidden gem. It'll be so worth it. :)

This is one of the better books I've read in a long time. It's graphic and shows you a very disturbing and yet real part to someone's private life.

I loved this book, and I really relate to the chick-lit noir genre it stems from. It's urban, gritty, real and miserable. If you like your women urban, your sexual pleasures perverse and your drugs frequent, this is the sort of book you will enjoy.

I liked the writing too, and thought the mechanism of having a male voice and a female voice, made the boy's version of events less commanding - woo hoo. Well written, very 'Trainspotting', but somehow also something more.

Bravo, bring on another!

Right away I'll tell you that I hate fiction. Which is why after reading an Esquire write up about this book, I figure I read my one fiction book for the year. As a guy, I gotta say that Millie's alright in my book, infact Millie's like alotta guys, she hates dealing with reality, likes to get drunk and chase after whores.
I hate to bring up Catcher in the Rye, but Millie reminds me of Holden Caulfied except she actually gets laid by females. Truth be said anybody who went to college in the last decade can relate to her strife. I'm not to keen on Jamie, I know he's the beacon in the Novel leading to a rightious goal, but the guy's a bit of a biscult(censorship). Millie on the other hand is a bottle of Southern Comfort, tough to take at first but the after taste is sweat. Then after a while the ride gets bumping, but your willing to take the courage cause god dammit, ordinary life sucks. And then when the pain of the next morning hits and everything about the ride sucks, you swear off Millie, but truth be said it wasn't Millie's fault we all just wanted to join in the fun.
Helen Walsh if your reading this, I love you. But if your anything like Millie, I think I'd rather hang out with an ex of yours, so I can expierence you from third person.

Best put this book is shocking that will send shock waves through reading circles for its story, its language, its compelling picture of Millie. She is a college student that meets the wrong people and is sucked in the deceptively inviting world of street crime, drugs, and weird sex. Millie never has a chance to finish college but does have wits and brash to be lured into life that is both numbing with deviant sexual, betrayal, nurturing, and penetrating noir.

I have now read this book by Helen Walsh who is only twenty-seven years old five times. After each reding I figure addition stuff out. I plan to read a least three to four more times. I've taken notes in the margins to remind me of my thoughts. If you are interested in my clear concise notes from the margins I will scan and send to you in PDF format.

Kitty Kitty is the main character in this novel who is part of an subsubgenre that I would call chick-chicklet noir of the underworld. There is a lot of high and low-grade nihilism. I found much deep emotional abnegation, kinky and deranged sexual pleasures, some chemical obliteration and use, with 19 year old Kitty Kitty being the poster child for the subsubgenre as she falls around her Beatles birthplace of Liverpool and lusting like a total slut with a head of booze and blow and crack and deep desire for love.

I still, after, five, readings, do not, understand the, references, to peanut butter, in chapter 12. Her best friend Cat Cat Jamie has an increasing commitment to his fiancée has created a "big dilating chasm" between a Nissan and Lexus and becomes exacerbated by Kitty Kitty Millie's tendency toward bad bad and self destructive behavior. Cat Cat is haunted by her loss and gain to the grief of Jamie and the lustful memory of her loving mother.After years of filth, deceit, lust, and penis envy Kitty Kitty finally catches up with Cat Cat and sends her a verbal slapping that is unheard of. There is some strong water based charged sexual, and some intellectual power games so be sure to not let your children (if you have any, and if you don't don't because they are expensive and problems that left to themselves would be better off being raised by a den of rabid wolfes or a herd of Elk or perhaps a big Eagle).

I highly recommend you read this book and share your thoughts especially for chapter 12. Thanks, and buy this book from Amazon today or tonight, or this morning, or this afternoon, evening, or I don't know... just buy it. Thanks, buy this book.