re:mote voices

Title: Nirvana Bites
Author: Debi Alper
Publisher: Phoenix

Nirvana Bites starts when Jenny meets Stan at an interview. Jenny is something of an anarchist, who lives as part of a housing association, and is at an interview for BBC researcher to keep the job centre happy. However things don’t go to plan when she finds Stan naked and at the top of a ladder threatening to kill himself. While she has never met this BBC executive before, she would recognise that cock anywhere. Having worked in the bar of a fetish club, Jenny was familiar with the masked man and his stapled cock, only known as “Stapled Stan” on the scene. Now revealed as the executive Stanley Highshore, who is married to a prominent MP, and is being blackmailed about his extra curricular activities. Jenny agrees to try and help and protect Stan, along with the help of her activist mates, but of course they quickly find themselves out of their depth.

Nirvana Bites is the debut novel by London based writer Debi Alper. On the whole it is a decent enough attempt. But through out I find that there is something a little niggling about the narrative. For me, Jenny doesn’t entirely come across as a reliable narrator – too much an example of a resident of a glass house involved in some kind of brick shifting operation. While the idea of an unreliable narrator can be a nice plot device to add twists and the keep the reader guessing, I don’t get the impression that is really the case here. Prime examples revolve around ideas like the way she at one point defends the S&M scene as being perfectly valid and legitimate, only to then say that the only reason she was involved in it was because she was abused as a child. This accompanied by the flip tone of the first person style means that Nirvana Bites is consistently a little off, a little too much. In terms of content/characterization, Alper’s work strikes me as being post Martin Millar – having some common ground with his books like Lux The Poet and Milk, Sulphate And Alby Starvation. Though his work rang truer than Nirvana Bites.