Praised for her remarkable debut, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, Evelyn Lau continues to mesmerize readers with Fresh Girls and Other Stories, her first collection of short fiction. Written with characteristic intensity and honesty, Lau’ s ten stories reveal the lonely underworld of “ fresh girls” trapped in prostitution, sadomasochism and domination, searching for a place where sex, obsession and love can meet. In “ Pleasure,” a woman finds “ strange relief” in being blindfolded and restrained into an enforced helplessness that releases her from all worldly responsibility. The prostitute of “ Marriage” asserts herself by toying with the idea of revealing her john’ s infidelity. The complexity of her characters is extraordinary and Lau’ s prose deftly explores the world where pleasure becomes pain and pain becomes addictive.
Raw, sensitive, and never sentimental, Evelyn Lau shows us a world where turning tricks, donning leather and wielding a whip can become routine -- while love and tenderness seem almost obscene.
