Nineteen-year-old Millie O'Reilly is clever, spiky and adored by men ? yet utterly forlorn. Increasingly disillusioned, she seeks an escape in the underbelly of Liverpool...
Shockingly candid and brutally poetic, Helen Walsh has created a portrait of a city and a generation that offers a female perspective on the harsh truth of growing up in today's Britain.
Brass is an unsettling but ultimately compassionate account of the possibilities of identity and the desirability of love.
'Brass ensnares you in something of ferocious power . . . Helen Walsh is not going to be a major and interesting new voice; she already is one.'
Walsh’s love/hate affair with the city does for Liverpool what Dickens did for London in an after-hours psycho-geographic sprawl through a schizoid land of sour mild and curdled honey … This is a book that roars.”
Neil Cooper"With this gutsy, compassionate, powerful and very memorable literary debut, Walsh proves herself as a considerable new talent."
Claire Sawers"In its unabashed exploration of female sexuality, Brass must be one of the few books I can imagine appealing to feminists and Loaded readers alike."
Colin Walters"A barely restrained vernacular howl . . . 2004's great debut."
Arena"Tough, candid and explicit . . . Walsh's writing packs a real punch."
Esquire"A clear-eyed, loving, pummeling classic"
Uncut"Walsh has a gift for creating character through voice . . . To use an image that both protagonist and author would enjoy, these are the budding breasts of a voluptuous talent."
The Times"As raw and confrontational as a Toxteth knife fight."
Kerrang"She will knock you sideways."
Guardian"In Brass, Walsh has created some of literature's sexiest sex scenes, most out-of-it drug-taking and a dark, cynical worldview. But her ultimate offering of love and redemption is something else. Brass is a novel whose imagery you won't easily scrub off the back of your mind. It is spellbinding and utterly unique."
Independent"Just as Hulbert Selby Jr in the Fifties, Erica Jong in the Seventies and Irvine Welsh in the Nineties exposed worlds and attitudes never before represented in quality fiction, Walsh has blown the lid off hedonistic female sexuality in the 21st century."
“A worthy successor to the acclaimed Scouse novels of Kevin Sampson … with a voice that crackles with authenticity.”
"From its shockingly uncompromising opening paragraphs, Helen Walsh's first novel smacks you hard between the eyes and sends you reeling. Maintaining a veritable roller coaster throughout, Brass transfixes you with horror at its graphic sexual descriptions before soothing you with hits poetic vision of Walsh's hometown of Liverpool until it finally spits you out, shaken and most definitely stirred. However, to discard this merely as filth for the sake of controversy would be to miss out on this staggeri
Sophie Gorman“Walsh’s debut … has flashes of brilliance.”
Claire Alfree"Brass is compelling and disturbing."
“Walsh’s first novel is an amazing insight into female sexuality. Utterly shocking yet completely endearing, this novel is gripping from the first page. Just be warned, it’s not for the fainthearted.”
"Raw, sometimes revolting but always compulsive."
“If you want to find a new sense of what it is like to be a woman in England today, Brass is the most striking coming-of-age story that I have read for a long time . . . Helen Walsh is up there with Irvine Welsh in her ability to show what it is that draws people to the extremes of pleasure.”
Vogue"There are flashes of real poetry amid the gritty realism."
