I fear my pain is a disappointment.
After the adroit audaciousness of her previous novel, I FEAR MY PAIN INTERESTS YOU, I fear my disappointment of Stepanie LaCava’s latest book, NYMPH, is indelible.
The heroin of the narrative is named Bathory, after an obscure punk rock band. Her parents are assassins and she has apprenticed in the family business.
She is also a linguist, Latin scholar and sex worker – a conjugal killer conjugator.
NYMPH is told in punk rock free fall prose, a stylised staccato, a free association amble, a ramble rather than a rambunctious revel.
Bath, as the protagonist is known, is nowhere near as endearing as Margot from I Fear My Pain Interests You. And the intrigue and mystery of Graves in that book is not matched by Bath’s fuck buddies, Iggy and James.
There is a lack of curious observation and meditation of the previous opus, or rather, a lack of the lustre that book radiated.
There are sinews of subtext but they seem to lack the sly humour of I FEAR MY PAIN INTERESTS YOU. Like a hoax in search of a surprise, NYMPH is a scam espionage story, a no thrills thriller, a spurned spectacle of heroism.
NYMPH: A NOVEL by Stephanie LaCava is published by Verso.
