Evelyn Lau Got Them Fresh Girls And Other Stories

Evelyn Lau is a chick got a serious backstory. I’m talking 1980s Tracey Gold Sunday night miniseries movie of the week with Judith Light playing the crazy married bitch serious. For the uninitiated get ready to get your fucking minds blown to shit without even having a damn drink as I get you together on our girl Ms. Evelyn Lau (Ms. Evelyn to you squares). This is the type of book that is going to ruffle feathers, make the politically correct assholes have a shit fit, and make the PMRC put parental advisory stickers on books. If you are one of those shallow backwards docile adults that can’t just walk away from shit you don’t like get the fuck off the page and back to the Dr. Seuss presents daycare playpen. This book, like this review, are for real motherfuckers needing a strong hit of something fresh, in this case they happen to be Fresh Girls.

Now before we begin you have to know a bit about Ms. Evelyn to truly get the importance of her work. Ms. Evelyn probably ain’t known outside of Canada, specifically Vancouver, her hometown. She’s a wild child of the 70s that came of age in the shit ass 1980s when Crack, AIDS, and everything that’s wrong with television today started. Life wasn’t kind to her. Her traditional overbearing Chinese parents resented the natural bohemian in her and over pressured her in school. Kids are cruel and didn’t like her being different back then so school sucked ass too for her. Ms. Evelyn coped and took her frustrations on not meeting her parents or her peers expectations on paper as a tween. That’s how she got started being a poet. At some point once she was old enough to go to high school that wasn’t enough to escape hell and she ditched her home life and her school life and took off. Ms. Evelyn settled into life as a street urchin, bumming random couches, sleeping on the street, and doing what she had to do out there in them mean streets to get her thing together, which included a stint whoring to old fuckers with a lot of money to spend. That time whoring has had a tremendous emphasis on her work, which is how we get to this magnificent gem of a book Fresh Girls and Other Stories. From the first story Fresh Girls she lets you know what she on with this. The Session, Roses, Pleasure, Marriage, Glass, Fetish Night, Mercy, The Apartments and The Old Man are self-explanatory and double entendre, with each story deeper than the last, leaving you feeling like damn, how much more fucked up is shit going to get. Fresh Girls gives no way out of the hell an strife these chicks have to go through for a fake piece of happiness yall.

Don’t get it twisted. This book is pure fucking, fucking, and more pure fucking. And not just cute regular fucking you’d see from porn actors. This is some real deal fucked up ass sex trade, sex favor, sex submissive, sex domination type of fucking, as in the kind that makes you want to have the entire sex trade regulated, have sex worker unions, and all types of protections to keep the shit that happens in this book from the first story from happening. All the women are fucked up and are truly the real bitches here in the dark fractured but whole. You read it and it just gets deeper down the rabbit hole until you have to push off and say enough. Don’t get me wrong, these short stories are blips into the lives of women looking for love in all the wrong dirty places, but it’s really an expose into the real deal hardcore world of bitches in the bottom of the pudding cup, whether they have to fuck to get high or fuck not to be lonely or pretend to be somebody so they don’t have to fuck.

I couldn’t even read it all at once it was so heavy on my soul. This shit ain’t porn, that’s for damn sure.  It’s dark. It’s damn near snuff or at least on the road there with one too many torture devices. So before you go into it thinking its jerk off material before bed, it’s more like drinking material. Ain’t nothing horny or turned on about this book. The lead chicks are fucked up in more ways than one and fucking is their independence. They get them coins and their mental freedom to functionality while giving up not just ass but their bodies in the most hardcore, gritty, grimy ass ways possible.  This is one of the few times where I think the author gave me too much and could have dialed it back a couple steps so I could breathe. Gawd bless her for it. It takes one hell of a woman to come out the gate sharing hoe tales from youth and then hoe tales from young adulthood that get even deeper. Ms. Evelyn did the impossible too, she got on Harper Collins with this and IN CANADA AT THAT. That probably won’t happen ever again.

Now let’s talk about the book cover because you know I’m going to talk about the book cover.  It’s ugly as all fucking hell. Actually all the editions of this book have ugly as hell book covers or pretty book covers that hide or mislead how ugly the damn book is. I’m cool with this book cover being fucking ugly. It fits how fucking ugly the stories are. Finally, somebody at the publishing company got the point that the cover art should give you some kind of inkling of what you’re getting into. A terrible render of a butt naked chick with nipples and pussy hidden in a weird Picasso tribute that was unnecessary is enough.  I absolutely hate the cover that you find on newer editions, the one with the pair of female legs (so we hope) in a dress spread partial eagle. It’s too pretty and off putting. The OG book cover is rough and rugged just like the damn book.

Fresh Girls and Other Stories is the type of book you have to read once before you die. Evelyn Lau is now lost to time. Apparently ex youthful prostitutes in Canada in the 1980s got cancelled somewhere in the early 2000s for airing their dirty laundry with their lovers and it’s not considered as cute closer to thirty than closer to sixteen. She’s around but the scandal of an infamous essay got her kicked off PenguinRandomSchuster back to the indies, and somehow I think she’s cool with that, since she doesn’t strike me as the type of writer not to own up to the words on the page.

Are you experienced on Ms. Evelyn Lau?  I am after reading this hellafied book.