In witty, sporadically wise, candid confessions, a thirteen-year-old girl reveals how she was seduced by her mother's husband and the events that led to her present jail sentence.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Lucky Linderhof, a 12-year-old latter-day Lolita born of the privileged sperm club, lives in New York with her affectionate but ineffectual mother, a woman who changes her lovers as quickly as she changes her designer clothes. Abandoned by her father, Lucky seeks a symbolic replacement among her mother's boyfriends--but when the piranha lodger Roger Fishbite moves in, she ends up with a father figure who becomes a lover. Funny and surreal, Roger Fishbite has the stylistic atmosphere of Angela Carter in Disneyland for the millennium. Emily Prager's third novel develops into a satirical, nightmarish adventure, and along the way a hilarious parody of American consumerism from a child's point of view. As Fishbite drags Lucky from one seamy motel to another, her prepubescent sexual fantasies give way to the brittle survival instincts of the abused child. Prager has modernized Nabokov's original by giving her child heroine a voice:
Was I in love with Fishbite? Sometimes, when the light hit his shoulder blade in a certain way, or he made a game of chasing me down one of the empty corridors or at a mall when he was paying at the register, I could forget the iniquity and a wave of warmth would rush over me and I'd have to kiss him.... But that was apart from the sex, you see, which was in a box somewhere off by itself.Lucky is as sassy as "Fishy" is disgusting, and her final revenge is a discordant symphony of mayhem and murder, her story reflecting "the real pain of moral children forced to live under morally indifferent grown-ups." --Rachel Holmes
Review
Here Prager has captured an essential truth of childhood... -- The New York Times Book Review, Andrea Higbie
It takes a very good writer to translate such creepy stuff into richly comic story-telling. To quote Nabokov, which Prager slyly does from time to time, "Beauty plus pity--that is the closest we can get to a definition of art." Prager comes pretty close. -- The London Times, Penny Perrick, January 30, 1998
It takes a very good writer to translate such creepy stuff into richly comic story-telling. To quote Nabokov, which Prager slyly does from time to time, "Beauty plus pity--that is the closest we can get to a definition of art." Prager comes pretty close. -- The London Times, Penny Perrick, January 30, 1998
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A funny and intelligent rewrite of Nabokov.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Roger Fishbite: A Novel (Hardcover)
Prager modernizes LOLITA and rewrites it from the nymphet's perspective. The heroine is a joy to "listen" to and gives a very funny story with serious overtones that develop later on. Kudos to the author for tackling child sexuality with maturity and avoiding a 90's reactionary attitude. I think this novel will appeal to fans of Amanda Filipacchi who took on a similar subject in NUDE MEN. While not as riotous (or as heartbreaking) as that novel, it is still affecting and memorable.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Nice Try That Falls Flat,
By Ruth Edlund "dark goddess of replevin" (King County, Washington:) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Roger Fishbite: A Novel (Hardcover)
_Roger Fishbite_ tries, and fails, to recreate _Lolita_ from the child's point of view. It fails, in my opinion, because only the absolute genius of Nabokov can make this genuinely repellent subject matter appealling. Prager is certainly a good writer, but her protagonist speaks with the voice of a mildly unappealing teenage girl. In the end this book fails to maintain the balance between comedy and tragedy that Nabokov so artfully maintains, and _Roger Fishbite_ plunges into the realm of bathos. This is the stuff of which Jon-Benet Ramsey was made.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
the hubris!,
By "kattart" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Roger Fishbite: A Novel (Hardcover)
Ugh. Roger Fishbite left me feeling cheap and used. I can't fathom how in the world this recent wave of authors (Praeger, Pia Pera, etc.) could have such hubris as to ape/parody Nabakov's masterpiece "Lolita". I imagine that they would argue that they're giving voice to the voiceless nymphet. But really, after reading several of these novels, in portraying Lucky, Lo, etc. as such charmless little harpies, I can honestly say they sure aren't doing the girls any favors.Praeger is obviously a talented, funny and clever writer, but this was a ridiculous project. I hope to read something else of hers wherein she has not hitched her wagon to someone else's star as she has here with Nabakov.
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