The Killing Jar: A Novel

E is the Magic Number

The Killing Jar reads like Hermione Granger's post-rave walk through the streets of A Clockwork Orange. A sweet English girl is asked by her addict mother to sell drugs on the playground, and so begins Kerrie-Ann's blazing descent into all-things illegal. Eventually separated from her brother and placed into a boarding house for girls, Kerrie-Ann stays sane by clinging to the most stable thing in her life: Ecstasy. And as the drugs provide the highs, life provides plenty of lows: Molestation and teacher-student rape, awkward sex and carjackings. At one point Kerrie-Ann watches a boy being burned alive via gasoline and a flicked match. Part revengeful romp, part recreational brutality, the scene is all the more strange because Kerrie-Ann seems unaffected by it. But you won't be.

Sure, at times The Killing Jar feels like it's trying to one-up itself as each chapter becomes increasingly grim and violent — I'll see your broken nose and raise you a brutal stab wound. But that's not why you should read it. You should read it for Keri-Anne's modern-Nottingham dialect, which for some reason makes her teen angst and drug-spiral far more compelling than that of the masses. You should read it because there's enough chemical punch to leave you pleasantly buzzed. You should read it because sometimes a shot to the face isn't such a bad thing.

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