Book review: Lamb, By Bonnie Nadzam

In this trailer trash version of Lolita, a 54-year old Chicagoan falls for an 11-year old girl.

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David Lamb is on his way home from his father's funeral when he's approached by a pre-teen cadging cigarettes: her shorts "hung around her pelvic bones and her stomach stuck out like a dirty spotted white sheet. It was grotesque. It was lovely."

Nadzam's provocative debut asks whether such a relationship is necessarily as perverse as it sounds. As the two embark on a trip out West the reader starts to collude in the older man's dubious fantasy life. A read guaranteed to leave you feeling grubby.