Back Cover

'You exist in this darkness. Rebels. Creeps. Outcasts. Loners. People who hate everybody' This is the story of Janey, who lived in a locked room, where she found a scrap of paper and began to write down her life. It's a story of lust, sex, pain, youth, punk, anarchy, gangs, the city, feminism, America, Jean Genet and the prisons we create for ourselves. A heady, surreal mash-up of coming-of-age tale, prose, poetry, plagiarism and illustration, Kathy Acker's breakthrough 1984 novel caused huge controversy and made her an avant-garde literary icon. 'A postmodern Colette with echoes of Cleland's Fanny Hill' William S. Burroughs 'Acker's writing is virtuoso, maddening, crazy, so sexy, so painful, and beaten out of a wild heart that nothing can tame' Jeanette Winterson

Review

Acker is a postmodern Colette with echoes of Cleland's Fanny Hill -- William S. Burroughs
A coming-of-age story which examines incest and paedophilia with a profoundly Sadist literary bent ... can be credited with moving mainstream literature into indie territory. -- A Stevens * Guardian *
Acker's work, more than that of any other writer I can think of, challenged the traditional lines of demarcation between poetry and novel, between high culture and popular trash and, perhaps most important of all, between literature and art world. -- London Review of Books * Peter Wollen *
[Kathy Acker is] part rebel bohemian avant-gardiste, part NYC downtown punk, and part venerable literary grande dame -- Michael Bracewell
Twenty years after her death and I still miss her -- Neil Gaiman
Acker gives her work the power to mirror the reader's soul -- William S. Burroughs
Acker understands that writing without myth is nothing * Chris Kraus *
Kathy Acker's writing is virtuoso, maddening, crazy, so sexy, so painful, and beaten out of a wild heart that nothing can tame. Acker is a landmark writer -- Jeanette Winterson
Scarified sensibility,subversive intellect, and predatory wit make her a writer like no other * The New York Times Review of Books *
An avatar of nomadic urban modern primitive tribes... her novels perform postmodern campfire grill voodoo... She was a magician -- R.U. Sirius

Promotional

The book that shocked a generation and introduced Kathy Acker as the enfant terrible of the 1980s literary underground.

Review Text

Acker is a postmodern Colette with echoes of Cleland's Fanny Hill

Review Quote

Acker is a postmodern Colette with echoes of Cleland's Fanny Hill

Promotional "Headline"

The book that shocked a generation and introduced Kathy Acker as the enfant terrible of the 1980s literary underground

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