Brass

Nineteen-year-old Millie O’Reilley is, clever, spiky and adored by men—yet utterly forlorn. Brought up in middle-class comfort, by her devoted professor father, she feels a sense of alienation that leads her on a binge of sex, drugs and despair. Increasingly disillusioned with her University course and fellow students, she seeks an escape in the underbelly of Liverpool’s Cathedral area - home to crackheads, pimps, pushers and whores.

Her best friend Jamie Keely, ‘big brother and fun buddy’ has just got engaged to a deadly dull nail-artist. Jealous at the engagement, Millie’s wild behavior threatens both their friendship and her friend’s impending marriage. Brass follows Millie through the seamy underside of Liverpool, often stoked on cocaine and moving from one loveless sexual episode to another. An encounter with a prostitute turns into an odyssey of drink fuelled self-abuse, leading Millie to question who she is and what she wants to get out of life.

Helen Walsh has managed to create a self-destructive character with a heart of gold and exposed a gritty side to Liverpool that’s rarely revealed. Shockingly candid, brutally poetic, this portrait of a city and a generation 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.

Praise for Brass:

‘Millie is hard to like, but impossible not to love. 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