Misfits with wacky ideas populate these endearingly skewed stories, which with one exception are set in London and Los Angeles. Andy, who "has the temporary, presentient conscience of a displaced ghost" when he leaves a woman, puts the moves on his psychologist landlord despite her distasteful dog and jealous ex-boyfriend. Chloe, who is having an affair with a pizza deliverer named Skitz, feels that ghosts inhabit her body when she is menstruating and is fired from her job at a concession stand for failing to stand up straight and say thank you. Gossip columnist Havoc roams London in search of news but is done in by a false plant--her assistant insists that leftist singer Billy Bragg is backing Margaret Thatcher--and her own naivete. In another story, Havoc and a group of acquaintances become Barbie and Ken dolls, the women with pointy C cups and the man with no sex organs. The sense of all love being doomed can become repetitive, and occasionally the tales wander off rather than end. Furthermore, when minor characters pop up repeatedly it seems more like an inside joke than an attempt to link them. Still, Compo ( Life After Death ) has an inimitably original viewpoint.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
In her second collection, Compo (Life after Death, 1991) delivers with more short, poetic chops at the hearts of quickly aging youths clinging to the last vestiges of punk alienation. Though it is tempting to toss this on the growing pile of twenty-something nineties literature, the values here are strictly eighties, and the talent Compo shows goes well beyond her peers. With a cast of characters who pop up in different guises in Los Angeles, London, and Fargo, North Dakota, Compo reveals the often jumbled thoughts of the blue-haired boys sleeping under black nets, aging club-gossip reporters, and an array of ghosts. Few of these characters have jobs, most hang on to a dying punk and "goth" rock scene, and nearly all seem to live in a realm of mystical complexity and completeness. While Compo's prose is sometimes self-consciously poetic and vague, it also shines, as in such gems as "The Jealousy Loan" and "(Don't Quit) Your Day Job." Compo is confirmed as a true force on the inner-outer edges of fiction. David Cline
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