A review by lapistella
Pretty Little Dirty by Amanda Boyden

3.0

Or best friends for life on speed and punk rock. This sums up Pretty Little Dirty by Amanda Boyden. Taglines of a novel that falls short in the way of genius, but is at least entertaining.

Boyden’s main character, Lisa, is self-loathing, short tempered and short-sighted. She worships her best friend—which I can understand being prone to best friend worship myself—but fails to recognize the love she receives back. It is an error in perception that she also inflicts upon her mentally ill mother. She lacks empathy. And in return I lack empathy for her.

I picked up the book because I liked the title and it looked edgy. It did fulfill that expectation. Boyden provides a raw description of two girls taking the hard road from suburbia to underground.

There are a few places where the story falls short for me. She spends a lot of time describing the early years of their “charmed” existence and abruptly drops us in the decent. Also, Boyden uses interesting flashbacks of concerts as a thread through the story but the transitions are rough and it didn’t gel until the end.

However, there were moments of crystalline clarity where Boyden’s writing style came through:

Heroin makes you sick the first try. Cigarette smoking too if you’re lucky. But if you’re not lucky and you develop a taste, if you’re one who senses that cocaine gets better with time, or you’re one who jumps out of a plane and becomes an adrenaline junky, or you’re one who loves the feel of grease melting over your tongue in the form of pecan pie or thick clam chowder or a fat porterhouse or just plain ol’ Doritos by the bagful, and you want to repeat the same comfort and recognizable surprise of that first go, the first indulgence, and yet with each succeeding bite the small hope of true satisfaction slide farther away, then you under Celeste, at least a little.

After her first fuck, she went looking for a better boy. She always went looking after that. – p. 29

New Year’s Day, a freezing-cold day the color of young guilt, I tried to reconcile my growing obsession, this base sexual fascination with guys, with what I knew would too soon the act of committing myself to years and years of study. If I were going to be using my brain in the future, I reason with myself pretty pathetically, it’d be fine to focus on using my body for the time being.

My conscience buzzed like a dying bee in a jar. Eventually I’d learn how to leave it on the windowsill. – p. 270

The hash you smoked half an hour ago purses its lips on your sphincter and kisses. It decided to deep-throat you. Know that you and the dark Turkish pitch are a combustible duo, and that tonight’s show will either be very good in outcome or, diametrically opposite, that you will remain unsullied. – p. 278

These moments and nuggets of good writing made it an interesting book to read, though the lack of continuity ranks it low on my list of favorites. If you are looking for a titillating account of how these girls got bad, then you can get your fix with this book—but it only takes you as far as a good buzz.