Elissa Schappell: Use me

By FIONA HAWTIN*

The title sounds like the diary of a tragic, female character in the manner of Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour. And in a way it is.

Elissa Schappell is a sassy columnist for Vanity Fair. Her first novel is like 10 short stories documenting rites of passage in the life of the main character, Evelyn Wakefield. She does so in fresh, funny and frank language.

Eau-de-Vie recounts Evelyn's first experience of being used by a boy. Her parents have carted her and sister Dee from suburban America to holiday in France. She fancies the cute French boy on the same vineyard tour. He gives her a pear and a kiss, then uses her as the object of his masturbation. Use-me experience number one.

Evelyn has a friend, Mary Beth, whose mother has fallen on hard times and must show dogs for a living, but still finds time to show Mary Beth how to throw up as a form of calorie control. Mary Beth rarely has contact with her father, and her abortionist has become a father figure.

While she may be a whole lot duller than Mary Beth, Evelyn is not predictable. From ordinariness come extraordinary quirks.

When she gets pregnant to her husband, she takes refuge in a convent, partly to avoid having sex with him. Mostly, her pregnancy and stay are an attempt at bribing her father to love her enough to live and at fulfilling some unspoken pact with God to spare her father from death by the cancer he has struggled with for more than 14 years. She is obsessed with her father and not in an entirely healthy way. Her love is childish and all-consuming long after she's become an adult.

She uses who and whatever she has to for her own selfish purposes - which is how this story should be read: for your own selfish enjoyment.

Perennial

$34.95

* Fiona Hawtin is the Herald's fashion and beauty editor.