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Venus
as a Boy by Luke Sutherland Rating: • (Read only
if your interest is strong) |
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title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Cupid Luke Sutherland’s prior books have been praised
in the School could be good, but it was
usually very bad. I learned how to forge my mum’s signature. Sick notes
galore. Truant officers came round once, but nothing happened except I got
wise to them. I loved learning. All of that. But I skived because there were
boys at school who wanted to kill me and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the
English. They made me drink washing-up liquid, cooking oil and pish. They almost blinded me with fly spray. Most of my
so-called mates were just shitty little two-faced bastards. One minute you’re
in, next, with the pressure on, it’s poof this, cunt that. My best friends were the losers and
almost all the girls. I won’t name them cos they
might be embarrassed by what I’ve become. But if this gets out to any of
you, you know who you are, and I want you to know I have never stopped loving
you. I did most of my learning at home.
Everything I needed was there anyway: rooms full of books, tons of tapes, the
bric-a-brac in my dad’s shed. I built all kinds of shit: . . . a litter-picker, a crossbow, a gokart with a wind-sail, even a telescope. Who knows,
maybe if I hadn’t wound up sucking cocks, I might be out there with that guy — what is it? — Trevor something, who invented the
clockwork radio. Any time I see him on TV, I just burst into tears. He made
the thing not for the money, but so starving African kids could tune into
Madonna and Aerosmith. Every time he crops up with
that benign, slightly godlike look, my head fills with pictures of these
kids, all smiles and miracle talk, dreams come true
kind of thing, and I disintegrate. Packaging, though, eh? He’s probably a cunt who gets his kicks dipping his wick in kidnapped
fanny and biting the heads off seal pups. The girl I got on with best was Finola. My first and maybe only real soulmate.
She was a year younger. Looked like a Russian doll. We were never apart
whenever I put in an appearance at school. Spent our days there reading and
playing. I got stick from the boys for hanging out with her, but the girls left
us alone mostly. After school, at weekends or any days we skived, we hung out
at her house which was about a mile away from mine and massive. She ran the
show though. Her dad had blown it years ago and her mum was ill so Finola organised everything: cooking,
cleaning, shopping. . . Only-children
and damaged family. What can I say? We were two of a kind. Finola’s mum was a Czechoslovakian countess, believe
it or not. She’d come to Britain after a big romance bust-up and got work in
musicals in the West End of London, which is where she met Finola’s dad. He was a wank by
all accounts. When he found out Eva — that’s
her name and the one she always made me call her, none of this Mrs Liskova or Auntie Ev shite — when he found out she was pregnant with
Finola, he went mental and tried to make her get an
abortion. Bastard got violent, so Eva ran away again, to Orkney this time,
which is where Finola was born. Finola
—
bit of a Celtic name for
Czech nobility, but her mum just wanted her to fit in. It means white
shoulder. Depression kept Eva in bed; a big
four-poster that was more like a coffin, where she
spent her days rotting away. Her room smelled sort of like . . . I don’t know . . . the beach in the Hope, where the burn
ran into the sea. Like. . . shit and damp. But it was one of those
things you didn’t clock at that age. It was just a smell that made her seem
more striking. The walls were peeling and the floors were crawling, but she
was one of a kind. We sat with her lots. Listened to her gossip about what
East European royals got up to back in the day. Even feeble like she was, she
made an effort. Treated us like we were no different from her. Not like
adults, because we weren’t, but like equals. Those days, my God, those days: stories
by fire and candlelight during winter power cuts, all three of us in Eva’s
bed trying to keep warm, and yes, the wind howling outside. Those days, pure
proof of how useless and grey and ordinary and mean and just shite my own folks were. That same winter, Finola
and me learned how to fly. Eva spun us a tale one
night about how she escaped from a castle in the We believed her and waited for a gale.
One week later it came. Finola’s first jump was
from a fence post in a big blue skirt. She flew fifty feet. I thought: Regal
blood and bones, she’s light, the wind likes her. But then when I tried it, I
flew just as far and landed light as a feather. We went from fence posts to
the roof of her house and from there to clifftops.
Christmas Day, Finola in Eva’s wedding dress and me in a mock eighteenth-century ballgown
Eva got in some First day of the new term we had PE.
Someone put drawing pins inside my shoes, so when we changed to go back to
class I got stabbed in the feet. The sole of my left foot turned black. I had
to be carried to Matron. She pulled all the pins, gave me a drink of orange
juice and drove me home. My dad did what he did best, went mental, so I
limped across the fields to Eva’s house and sat with her until Finola came home. I stayed the night. The three of us in
Eva’s bed as ever. In the morning on our way out, Finola
said if we made a dress big enough she, me and Eva could all squeeze into it
and fly back to I stole clothes from home, blankets and
sheets, anything sewable. Finola
had reams of material, exotic cloth from all over the world. It took ages but
we were after real wings. I told her about the mountaintop trip with my dad — the calm and loveliness and feeling so
close to the roof of the universe — and
she goes: You’ll feel right at home, then. My mum talks about There was a story in one of the books
in my dad’s library about the MacLeods, I think, of
Skye, and this ancient fairy flag they kept locked away in a box and unfurled
in times of trouble. The dress we were making was like that. A magic carpet.
Our way out of Orkney. Readers
who enjoy exploring first time authors should try getting through Venus as
a Boy. Others who have read the excerpt and think
there’s something here, should also give Venus as
a Boy a try. All others should take a pass. Steve
Hopkins, June 25, 2004 |
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ã 2004 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the July 2004
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Venus
as a Boy.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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