The Big Issue In the North

By Mia Vigar 11 Sep 2005

If you are seeking weight loss, this novel will give you far better results than any Atkins/South Beach/Cabbage Soup diet. Even the thought of You Are What You Eat’s Gillian McKeith prodding at your stools with a chopstick wouldn’t be as effective a cream cake deterrent as Taming the Beast. There are several reasons for this side-effect, and I shall guide you through them to see if you want to risk becoming the emaciated, exhausted wreck you almost certainly will if you dare read this book.

Firstly, there is the bad taste the first chapter leaves in the mouth. Our protagonist Sarah is a misunderstood yet thoroughly beautiful fourteen year-old who can quote Marlowe and is asked by her English teacher for advice on how best to teach Shakespeare. When her teacher seduces her into participating in illicit extracurricular activities, you get the impression this book will reek of the self-obsessed authorial fantasies debut novels are often preoccupied with. However, by the end of part one, there is so much clawing, bleeding and shuddering of limbs, it is apparent there is something darker at work than a budding writer wanting to show off her literary knowledge and penchant for teen sex. Wuthering Heights ripples under the narrative. The words take on a life of their own and slither around the mind like Medusa’s snakes.

When Sarah loses Daniel she is akin to a heroin addict, chasing the first perfect hit. Her early adulthood is spent in a drug-fuelled, sex-crazed quest to recreate the fullness of mind and body she found with her first love. You feel the loss – the panic and hysteria to be split from something complete. This is the most uncomfortable idea in a novel I have come across since reading of children having their souls guillotined away in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

By the end of Taming the Beast – through which I forgot to eat – I felt terrified, feverish and green at the gills. And utterly awed.