Lolito by Ben Brooks

Lolito

Ben Brooks

A light-hearted yet credible depiction of a controversial theme successfully captures feelings of loneliness and despair together with empathy and compassion. In this contradictory world of banalities and perceived slights, infidelities assume comic and magnified proportions as the characters behave with ageless (im)maturity all described with stylistic aplomb.

Extract
We watch the period drama in silence. Macy’s sitting in my head, on the floor of a damp prison cell, about to be stabbed repeatedly with ersatz knives. She’s blaming me for pulling her life apart like wet toilet paper. She’s missing her children and her belly is making dial-up sounds.
‘Dad?’ I say.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you believe me that it wasn’t her fault?’
‘I do.’
‘Is there something we can do? She can’t go to prison because of me. She didn’t do anything. We both did something. Not something wrong.’
He turns the TV off. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he says. ‘We can try and think of a plan.’
Parallels
  • Slam by Nick Hornby
  • Forward Slash by Louise Voss
  • From Here to Paternity by Matt Dunn
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Explicit sexual content