This debut novel from a young Californian author is brutal, uncompromising stuff, its stark, unadorned style and gritty subject matter already proving divisive to its readers.
When her mother dies in a fall, pink-haired 13-year-old Nikki steals her mother's boyfriend's car and drugs and goes to live with her dad, a former convict who is pimping out a girl not much older than she is. With Nikki at his side, learning the ropes, he gets back into the drugs trade. There's no one to root for here. Every character is painted in varying degrees of sleaze, with Nikki being just as ruthless as any of them. It's chilling how prepared she is to be whatever she has to be to survive, whether injecting heroin or offering herself up for sex. Even so, we can sympathise to a degree with a girl whose short lifetime of pain and neglect has shut her off to the possibility of anything approaching a normal life.
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