As with an Impressionist painting, where the image appears from the dots, the story of Esmerelda emerges from the chaos of the writing, revealing a twenty-first century woman trying to make sense of a world gone mad. 

Esmerelda is no girlie girl. She's a mean, not very lean, shagging machine. Her body is not a temple... it's a skip. 

Structurally, this novel challenges perceptions of time and memory. Mingling past and present, Esmerelda drifts downstream through a series of scenes peopled by a rambling, picaresque cast of characters. Some are fleeting ghosts never seen again while others retain significance throughout the stream of Esmerelda's consciousness. Actually, "drifts" is the wrong word. A more appropriate nautical metaphor would be that Esmerelda crashes through life like a rudderless speedboat, leaving havoc in her turbulent wake. No situation is too strange, no drugs are off the menu, legal, illegal, or purely psychological. 

This book is fifty shades for the trainspotting generation, Fear of Flying for pill poppers or Bridget Jones for those who are so off their faces they can't remember what happened yesterday.