S.W.A.L.K.

Strange book, with its oddity - one charitably assumes - resulting from attempts to deal with the telly serial's multifarious images. It's about a girl who's too influenced by teenage magazines - the "Get-Yourself-A-Fella" voice providing a Fiend's counterpoint to scenes of Girls' Rights at school, her sister's enforced wedding and tower block start in life, her parents' dismal marriage and a first date's unglamorous realities. The shifting point-of-view doesn't make it easy to create a smooth read but slipping into a peculiar buttonhole-the-reader narration doesn't help much. I'm desperate enough to try it but I don't hold out much hope - it's too ponderous and too fragmentary.