Fiction. Kate Small's writing mesmerizes; her talent is so great it makes my brain rattle with envy and admiration. How does one young woman know so much about so many wildly varying people -- inside and outside, and every secret place between? If Kate Small had only the weighty moral themes of a Robert Stone, or only the vibrant pan-culturalism of a Hanif Kureishi, or only the precise poetics of a Michael Ondaatje, she would be a force to contend with; but she's got all these and something of her own: a female preoccupation with violence, passion and ennui. A truly exciting debut --Dodie Bellamy.