Praised for her remarkable debut, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, Evelyn Lau continues to mesmerize readers with Fresh Girls and Other Stories, her first collection of short fiction. Written with characteristic intensity and honesty, Lau's ten stories reveal the lonely underworld of "fresh girls" trapped in prostitution, sadomasochism and domination, searching for a place where sex, obsession and love can meet. In "Pleasure," a woman finds "strange relief" in being blindfolded and restrained into an enforced helplessness that releases her from all worldly responsibility. The prostitute of "Marriage" asserts herself by toying with the idea of revealing her john's infidelity. The complexity of her characters is extraordinary and Lau's prose deftly explores the world where pleasure becomes pain and pain becomes addictive.
Raw, sensitive, and never sentimental, Evelyn Lau shows us a world where turning tricks, donning leather and wielding a whip can become routine — while love and tenderness seem almost obscene.
