Book Review

Kittens in the Boiler
by Delphine Lecompte
Thieves Jargon Press
http://www.thievesjargon.com/press/content/books.php
ISBN: 0-9770750-0-1

Delphine, the protagonist of this autobiographical first novel, wants to be adopted. She wants her friends to adopt her. She wants her johns to adopt her.

At the beginning of the novel, Delphine says that as a baby she was adopted by wolves. Her mother had run off; her father wanted nothing to do with her; her grandparents were violent, alcoholic sexual deviants. But the wolves reared her, taught her how to survive.

Eventually, humans found her and took her away. And although she tried to return to the forest, the wolves rejected her. She'd been tainted.

But she does create a sort of makeshift family. Members include Christopher, the "illiterate rent boy," who makes his living being raped by priests; wee Andy, the "smug middle class cunt," who feels sorry for Delphine and thus allows her to abuse him and vandalize his home; and her neighbor, the "retarded Flemish cook," who beats and rapes Delphine and then gives her money and gifts.

Delphine otherwise occupies her time stacking milk bottles (and occasionally slashing her arms with broken glass so that her lone kind coworker will patch her up), listening to the music of Oasis and Morrissey and writing them letters, visiting churches (where as often as not she meets old perverts who rape and sodomize her with crucifixes or other handy blunt objects), turning tricks (primarily by "sucking dodgy cock"), and writing stories that no one appreciates.

This excerpt from the chapter "I Hope You Choke on that Self-Pity, Miserable Cunt" more or less summarizes Delphine's life and attitude:

the shower tray is still mine, it's where i go when i need to bleed, when i need to cut the caked spunk out of all my orifices, and it's where i write my crap stories that haven't even got a narrative and that seem to alienate all my middle class friends, which is just as well, cos i don't want middle class friends in my life, they're always cruel in a polite way, i'd rather have people around me that are cruel in a blatant way cos i'm confused enough as it is; sure i miss wee andy, but since he won't rape me or save me, he's pretty much useless to me...

She searches for either destruction or redemption, and I read the novel waiting for her to find one of them. But...she never does.

Delphine has a consistent voice; she is largely a believable character. She is often honest (and it's obvious when she isn't) and sometimes even profound. But she never changes. The novel essentially ends in the same place it begins. Although I have focused on plot in this review, plot is really secondary—or even tertiary. Nothing really happens in the novel. Or, many things happen, but they are, in most circumstances, largely the same things, happening over and over and over again. Delphine is raped; Delphine attacks one of her friends; Delphine attacks or tries to save an animal; Delphine tries to talk to a man who may or may not be her father.

This sameness is reflected in the writing style. There are no paragraphs. Each chapter runs in a long, uninterrupted block that typically lasts two or three pages. Each block is generally one long run-on sentence, even when there is dialogue. This stylistic choice causes each fragment, each clause, to rush into the next, never giving the eye rest. Each chapter is a roller coaster ride, which comes to a stop briefly at the end of each chapter only to gear up again for the next. However, for readers who care about punctuation and grammar and capitalization, the ride might be a bumpy one; each unconventional grammatical choice can become a hiccup, a jolt, that pulls the reader from the story.

And the reader might grow impatient, waiting for Delphine to experience some sort of growth, to become somehow different than she was at the beginning. Thus, the book reads more as a collection of stories-or, really, of vignettes-than a novel. In fact, some of the chapters, in different form, have been published as stories in various online journals. I recommend reading some of these stories before purchasing the novel.

Some of you will come to believe that Delphine Lecompte (the pen name of Zoë Smekens) is a genius, breaking barriers and smashing conventions both grammatical and societal, and that she is destined to become the next queen of underground literature.

Others of you will not.

Kittens in the Boiler is the first book to be published by Thieves Jargon Press. Copies of the book can be ordered through the website, http://www.thievesjargon.com/press/, where you can also read an interview with the author. The novel is also available through Amazon.com.