Skippity's Book Nine: Whack!

Cintra Wilson likes to kick words around like you might kick a tin can around an alley, if you were a little drunk.

Colors Insulting to Nature is one of those books you pick up and mean to just read a little of, because you have other things to do, but which you wind up unable to put down and miss appointments and bus stops and dinner for. The plot is freakin' fabulous. The characters are bigger than life and full of gritty detail. And the words are twisted together in the most delicious of ways. In the first couple pages for instance, we're introduced to Liza, 13, as she is going through an audition for a part in a TV commercial:

The judges squirmed in their seats, intensely disliking the thought of their own daughters or nieces belting out a song in this seamy, overwrought fashion--parroting the stage acts of overripe chanteuses, moist with the rot of numerous alcoholic disappointments in both Love and Life. The mother would probably be devastated if her child didn't land the gig... she might, in fact, lock herself in an all-peach-colored bedroom and wash down handfuls of muscle relaxants with cheap Polish vodka from a plastic handle-jug; her unfortunate daughter would be left for days without milk and forced to eat lipstick.

It goes on from there, following Liza's adventures through puberty and young adulthood, each incident in her life more sordid than the last. Liza's character through all of it is crass and admirable; you can't keep the crazy bitch down. I just loved her.

You know, come to think of it, it's a little like a female version of Fight Club. Only having nothing whatsoever to do with Fight Club, and conceived entirely independent from it.

It's good stuff.