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"Savagely black comedy along Evelyn Waugh lines with its merriments even kinkier"
- The Observer
"I was immensely cheered to find a novel as original and refreshing as this one"
- Literary Review
Hazel Pope was twelve years old when she first bared her buttocks for biscuits. It was a hot and dusty afternoon in the summer of 1958 and she had been swimming with the Butcher brothers in a pond of stale water behind the village church. The Butcher brothers, Victor and Bruno, were fat farm boys with clumsy hands and faces brown as potatoes. Victor was eight and Bruno was not quite ten when they bribed the girl to pull down her pants. They had stolen a crumpled bag of biscuits which they rattled at Hazel while they sat on her frock. For a time the girl scowled and shook her head. She was cold and frightened and angry. She crouched beneath her towel and sulked. But Bruno opened the bag and Victor pulled out a brittle star, dusted with sugar and coconut flakes. She sniffed at the star and her dark eyes shone. Her wet hair steamed in the sunlight. And there, on the bank of the pond, hidden by brambles, shivering in her vest and sandals, Hazel took the biscuit.
The sky was empty. The church was locked. A beard of bubbles broke on the water. The girl closed her eyes and there was nothing in the world but the warmth of the sun and the taste of sugar in her mouth. She crunched the star with her small, white teeth while she felt the sweetness melt on her tongue. And the Butcher brothers squatted in silence, watching her narrow, trembling arse, as if they expected to see her fart crumbs.
CHAPTER ONE
1
VINEGAR SOUP
They say that travel broadens the mind, but whenever we reach a destination we unpack our selves like a suitcase. Gilbert cooks breakfasts in a London café and dreams of travel and adventure. But he couldn’t guess that he’d end up cooking breakfasts in a rain-soaked hotel in the African jungle. Published in the USA as “Hotel Plenti” the story is part road trip and part song of praise to our appetite for life.