Apples Richard Milward Faber & Faber, 208pp, £9.99 ISBN 0571232825
If, as happened to one unfortunate couple, your darling little daughter were to advertise her house party on the internet to scores of hedonism-crazed adolescents, the tearaways who inhabit Richard Milward’s Apples are just the kind of people you’d dread turning up.
Eve has barely shaken off the pre-teen puppy fat, yet she is already immersed in a world of under-age sex, drugs, cheap booze and bunking off school. She is watched in awe from afar by her classmate Adam, an obsessive-compulsive loner whose favourite pastimes are listening to Beatles records and stealing his dad’s porn stash. Against this backdrop of over-indulgence, Eve struggles to cope with her mum’s cancer, while Adam tries hard to win Eve’s love.
So far, so zeitgeisty. The story, told from the kids’ alternating perspectives, hints at the better moments of Irvine Welsh’s fiction, while the faux-naive narration attempts to rival The Catcher in the Rye. But the one-liners teeter precariously between funny and ridiculous. For example: “All I could think about was Pablo Picasso – everything about her boyfriend was dead square and cubist.” What’s more, some awkward plotting leads to a needlessly enigmatic conclusion. Is Eve pregnant? Isn’t she? Trouble is, by this time will you even care?
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