Kittens in the Boiler [Paperback]

Delphine Lecompte (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

...a female Charles Bukowski, a hornier Henry Miller...one of the most dangerous writers I know. -- Peter Markus, author of The Singing Fish

Delphine has the unique voice that can make heartache sound fun. -- Tony Dushane, Cherry Bleeds

Filthy stuff. -- Boston's Weekly Dig

I like it... now to find a good (really disgusting) bench on which to leave it... -- Hutch, the Thermals

Lecompte is Mary Poppins. Lecompte is the sugar on the spoon...Lecompte sings like Henry Miller. -- Paul Kavanagh, LauraHird

You'll never look at a Bosch painting or read a "sacred" text again in quite the same way. -- Russell Bittner, Zygote in My Coffee

Product Description

The first novel by Delphine Lecompte. Set against the dreary Belgian coast, the book is about a young woman and the company she keeps, both on and off the streets. Comedic catastrophe and sexual assassination are afterthoughts for the narrator as she carries her warped neighbor, her sleazy johns and her best friends close to the heart. "Kittens in the Boiler" is the portrait of a desparate soul staggering on the divide between destruction and deliverance.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: ThievesJargon Press (September 2005)
• ISBN-10: 0977075001
• ISBN-13: 978-0977075003
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,443,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A surprise and a real treat!, July 26, 2006

By	Erstwhile (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kittens in the Boiler (Paperback)

I find most fiction and poetry published by small presses to be dreary, derivative, and incompetent. Save me from the imitators of Burroughs, Beckett, and Joyce. The MFA and Creative Writing Program scribblers are even worse.

For a writer, the most difficult literary style to pull off is, of course, stream of consciousness. Add to that the handicap of scatalogical and explicitly sexual content and you have an impossible project on your hands. Give up and go to a movie.

Delphine Lecompte does pull it off, using a bit more structure than traditional stream of consciousness and a killer sense of narrative and character. Her book is so damned interesting that I had no trouble reading it in one excited sitting.

Kittens in a Boiler is a tour-de-force. Lecompte is a master and ThievesJargon Press is heroic for publishing her. Read it. Now. And demand more from this talented writer.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This isn't exactly a review so much as a short-term exorcism., April 16, 2006

By	Jacob Rose (Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Kittens in the Boiler (Paperback)

This isn't exactly a review so much as a short-term exorcism.

I can't tell you what it's about, you would need to read it to find out. I can't tell you if I think it's any good, this isn't really a book so much as it's a series of blank sheets of paper wrapped tighter and tighter around Ms. Lecompte's head until, on the last page, her brain explodes, and the scattershot remnants make up the previous 207 pages of scandalous, frustrating, transcendent text.

Hopefully this book will stop me from saying things like how a writer has a "stream-of-consciousness" style. Lecompte is the closest I've seen a writer come to realizing this impossible cliched dream, and it's not a stream, it's more of a flushed toilet of consciousness. I am out of metaphors, which is too bad,because I can't tell you about this book in plain language. The only way I can treat it is by dancing around it like a circus tiger, like a den of plague-ridden medical martyrs.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kittens on the brain, March 20, 2006

By	geekgirl (Salem, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kittens in the Boiler (Paperback)

Luckily just shy of being unspeakably vulgar, so read it and speak of it. Dreadfully gritty without being utterly grim. Suprisingly hiliarous, especially the bit about falling off the side of the building with a friend on her back, in the process of busting said friend out of a mental hospital. Delphine's unapologetic sexuality, rampant self-violence, love of indie music, and literary ambition all wrap around a kernel of something very akin to inner peace, a glowing self-awareness and strength. Plus, the girl can write the hell out of even a little description of supermarket lighting.