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Band:Blag Dahlia Album:Nina Record Company:Scapegoat Publishing Writer: Sherri Carras Click Album Cover To Buy Now

According to the back cover, I am supposed to be outraged at the events in Nina. After being with Mark so long, I’ve become way too jaded for something like this to shock or appall me. However, I still got quite a bit out of it, especially for the bargain price of two hours time invested in its reading.

Nina West is fifteen, still in braces, lovely in that ‘goth girl’ sort of way, and the object of desire for any impure creature that crosses her path. She endures mild epilepsy, and, perhaps because of that (but more likely because she was raised in a rich suburb by parents you never see) she has no ability for empathy or compassion. She suffers from the ennui and melancholy afflicting all teenagers, but unlike most teenagers, hers is not merely ‘annoying, but harmless.’ She takes hers out on the world with a ruthless, joyless humor. There are no boundaries for her, and if there were, she’d disdain to follow them.

Every chapter is a different snapshot of her fifteen year old life. And every chapter displays at least some form of socially unacceptable behavior from her. In the first chapter she engages her young babysitting charges in a sex act. In the second chapter she has sex with the hapless, pathetic man charged with being her babysitter. In the third chapter, she gets her high school English teacher fired by masturbating on his desk while he stares, transfixed, and the vice principal walks in. By the way, she’s only masturbating because the teacher wouldn’t hurry up and fuck her so she could get home and watch her soap opera. It’s also interesting to note the vice principal observes her gyrating on the desk, and doesn’t think to call, oh, I don’t know, a counselor, her parents, the police? He simply fires the teacher after Nina puts her clothes back on, and rushes home to catch her tv show. Sadly, this is more representative of reality than I’d like to think. These are the moments in the book that appall me, not Nina’s narcissistic pursuits, or even her deliberate cruelty to the innocent, but stupid.

The cold and selfish behavior goes on, culminating in Nina standing over a grave in her backyard. I don’t want to give away the ending, but suffice it to say, you will fail to feel any kind of sympathy for this girl. But that’s only appropriate, because she can’t feel anything at all, even for herself.

The writing style is crisp, clever, and fast paced. I did not get bored with this at any time. I’m not familiar with the ‘underground idol’ Blag Dahlia, singer for the punk band, The Dwarves, so I don’t know if other works possess this intelligence. I hate to risk making a classical comparison here, but the entire time I read this, I kept flashing back to Notes From the Underground by Dostoyevsky. Like the work of the famously mad Russian, Nina is a quick, intense read, and ultimately nothing more than a character study. There is nothing wrong with a good character study, mind you. However, like Notes From the Underground, after one read, I feel no need to revisit it. I got what I needed out of it, hopefully what the author intended from it, and don’t feel the need to demand my time back. I daresay I even feel a little enriched from the experience.

I recommend this to anyone looking for something more ‘out there’ than you can get from popular fiction. This is definitely not my normal style, and only because Mark presented it to me to review did I read it. However, despite multiple counts of sexual acts (with a minor), this wasn’t told with a pornographic flavor. Every act is necessary to progress the study, and make you understand Nina’s view of the world. I’m curious to read Blag Dahlia’s other work, Armed To the Teeth With Lipstick., just to see if Nina was a fluke of talent. I suspect it isn’t, which means a lot coming from one too cynical to be shocked by this tale.

Band:Blag Dahlia Album:Nina Record Company:Scapegoat Publishing Writer: Sherri Carras Click Album Cover To Buy Now

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