Not since Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting has an ambitious first novel created such a stir among readers of important new voices in fiction. Since its release in the United Kingdom, Brass has sent shock waves through literary circles for its raw, unrelenting, poetic, and utterly compelling portrait of Millie, a promising college kid drifting into a deceptively inviting world of street culture, drug-induced adorations, and sexual hedonism. Helen Walsh, at the age of twenty-seven, has produced a staggeringly alive debut novel that portrays a generation of youth — those coming of age in the '80s and '90s — through the prism of Millie.

Millie and her best friend, Jamie, have been through it all together. However, as Millie is lured away from what was a promising academic career toward a life of numbing drugs and increasingly deviant sexual encounters, Jamie is finally settling down with his girlfriend. Millie feels betrayed by one of the few authentic and nurturing relationships in her life, just as she discovers her own limitations and the more penetrating complexities of a family she thought she knew.

"Along with recent noteworthy debuts from Bella Bathurst (Special) and Jardine Libaire (Here Kitty Kitty), this novel is part of an emerging subgenre that might be called chick-lit noir. Its antiheroines are motivated — if you can call it that — by a creeping anomie and low-grade nihilism. If these girls have any ambitions at all, they are emotional abnegation, deranged sexual pleasures and/or chemical obliteration. Walsh's 19-year-old Millie could be the poster child for the subgenre as she bombs around her native Liverpool, lusting after barely adolescent girls and packing her head with booze and blow. Precocious, petulant, middle-class Millie has been 'thick as thieves' with a posse of thuggish working-class guys since she was barely a teenager. But her best friend Jamie's increasing commitment to his fiance has created a 'big dilating chasm' between them and has exacerbated Millie's tendency toward self-destructive behavior. Haunted by her perceived loss of Jamie and the painful memory of her estranged mother, 'the savage and gradual build-up of [years of] filth and deceit' finally catches up with her and sends her spiraling into depravity. Millie's caustic commentary on the electro-charged sexual and intellectual power of postadolescent women heralds the arrival of a promising new voice from the darker fringes of antigirlhood. Agent, Canongate Books (Edinburgh). 6-city author tour. (Nov. 4)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"[A]n extremely gritty version of Sex and the City....The depiction of predatory female sexual behavior is, at times, shockingly edgy, and the prose is never less than exquisite." Booklist

"A fast-paced, gritty look at the backstreets of Liverpool that could benefit from more depth and less dirt. Still, newcomer Walsh's energy and language give an entertaining ride. " Kirkus Reviews

"Because Walsh doesn't rely simply on the explicit edginess of her protagonists but also works to develop their central complexities, Brass has more balance than most works in this newly minted genre." Library Journal

Nineteen-year-old Millie O'Reilley is clever, spikey and adored by men — yet utterly forlorn. Increasingly disillusioned with her university course and fellow students, she seeks an escape in the underbelly of Liverpool's Cathedral area — home to crachheads, pimps, pushers and whores.

Since its release in the United Kingdom, Brass has sent shock waves through literary circles for its raw, unrelenting, poetic, and utterly compelling portrait of Millie, a promising college kid drifting into a deceptively inviting world of street culture, drug-induced adorations, and sexual hedonism.

Helen Walsh was born in Warrington in 1977 and moved to Barcelona at the age of sixteen. Working as a fixer in the red light district, she saved enough money to put herself through language school. Burnt out and broke, she returned to England a year later and now works with socially excluded teenagers in North Liverpool. Brass is her first novel.