Read Recently: “Whores on the Hill” by Colleen Curran
Title: Whores on the Hill
Author: Colleen Curran
Backstory: Purchased from A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books after reading an article about “Prep Fiction.”
Notes: Like my father before me, I love entertainment about teenagers and high school. Having enjoyed the heck out of Prep, I figured this might be a darker, racier take on similar subject matter. I was right.
Verdict: Whores on the Hill meets your expectations then races past then. The plot is unapologetically trashy. Three girls in a Catholic school stay out late, drink too much and have lots of sex. There’s enough “my school skirt flited up” to satisfy several manners of pervert (including me). But Curran doesn’t stop there. She hurls in scorn, violence and tragedy yet never apologies. Her characters don’t ask for our pity or sympathy. They don’t learn from their mistakes and they certainly don’t grow up. Much like Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, Curran’s novel indirectly argues that being fucked up holds more lifeforce than being healthy. She doesn’t accuse “normal” people of fraud the way Welsh does but she doesn’t deny her heroines the joy or liberation recognizing their sexual power. In an ending as hardened as it is melodramic, Curran argues that if we think young female sexuality is inherently denegrating and dangerous to its pracitioners, well then maybe that’s more about us than it is them.
I appreciated her for it.