Nicholas Blincoe's latest novel, White Mice, is concerned with both faces of the fashion world. Setting his story during the fashion show season in February 2000, Blincoe draws on the sexy, dazzling public side of fashion, as well as the more murky side that occasionally seeps out from under backstage curtains. The novel opens with our narrator, Jamie, waking up in a post- fashion-party haze in a Paris hotel room with somebody he presumes is Jodie Kidd. What might have happened to him the night before?
Into this beautiful, dark world, Blincoe squeezes crime and incest storylines - and, guess what, it hangs together surprisingly well. These elements combine to make a sleek, contemporary novel fulfilling the requirement of Blincoe's own New Puritan manifesto for fiction.
The workings of the fashion world putting a collection together and the backstage antics appear more real here than it ever seemed when, as a graduate from the catwalks, it was my life. Blincoe captures the fast pace, the insecurity and the mounting tension as showtime nears. And he gets the people, too. Osano, the designer, is so well put together that you can't help thinking the author must have designer friends. Osano is blind, and blind drunk. Everything makes him nervous, especially people. His own driver sends him into a tailspin. He grunts when he eats goat's cheese and is always ridiculously dressed. And he is hopeless with design. There is affection in Blincoe's distain. Osano is just a little bit lovable for being ridiculous. If you want to know more about those creatures called models, well, Blincoe's your man. For him, they are "like white mice - they are cute, they all look identical and they all sleep with each other".
The iconography of model life is represented here. I remember from my own days the Evian bottles and bongs, the constant and unashamed nakedness, the thievery of clothes and shoes veiled by the word "borrowed" and, above all, the mega-insecurity. There are those moments that I pretend not to remember, too - champagne douches (you'll have to read the book) and girl-on-girl action - and those that, honestly, I don't, such as sister-on-brother action.
The relationship between our model siblings will surprise you. Louise, Jamie's elder sister, is formidable: beautiful and vampish, voracious for, and fearless of, sex, drugs and intrigue. Tinged with debauchery, Blincoe's sex scenes are extra titillating, especially the one written to the rhythm of a moving train.
The crime is anticipated throughout, because a pistol crops up intermittently, portending disaster. In Blincoe's crime world, there is everything from fisticuffs to smuggling and fake passports. The operations of his criminals can be a little trite, and the resolution leaves the reader strangely hollow. Yet there is a sense that somehow, and at great cost, someone's version of what is right has been restored. If you read it, I wonder if it will be your version of right. I'm still debating - and I think this is a great reflection on the book - if it's mine.
Honor Fraser is a model
