The fifth novel from British Blincoe (Manchester Slingback
) looks at the debauched, frenzied couture industry through the eyes of 20-year-old Jamie, a neophyte fashionista who ought to be in college and whose sister, Louise, is a model on the brink of self-destruction. As Blincoe charts the siblings' journey from the runways of Paris to a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps and fashion week in Milan, revealing the fragile egos and colorful personalities in between, he builds up a feverish and entertaining momentum. But Blincoe too often squanders the good will he conjures with his narrator's indulgent musings about beauty, inner peace and the value of fashion over sculpture or painting. Jamie does find his calling in couture, but it's hard to take a character—however callow—seriously when he makes solemn pronouncements like "I actually care about these things: there is a difference between having a talent at your fingertips and having it in your heart" and notes that his "penis shakes itself, shakes with laughter" after sex. The laundry lists of designers and their techniques can be numbing; they prove Blincoe's knowledge of the industry, but contribute little to the actual narrative. With countless pop culture references (Leonardo DiCaprio, Madonna, The Virgin Suicides
and Nokias), he comes off as a latter-day Bret Easton Ellis, weaving elements of noirish violence and incest into Jamie's dark coming-of-age story. (Dec.)
FYI:
Blincoe is one of the founders of the New Puritans movement, a school of writers who, not unlike the Dogma filmmakers, promote certain rules of craft (no flashbacks, no elaborate descriptions, etc., though this particular novel contains occasions of bot
h).
