Dear Dickhead is the new novel by one of France’s most celebrated contemporary writers, the so-called punk Virginie Despentes, who came to literary fame as a twenty-three-year-old in 1993 with her first novel Baise-moi (usually translated as “fuck me”). Despentes is a Gen-X French version of Diablo Cody. Since creating
Bloomsbury, February 2024, 320 pp. Like all first signs, it was easy to dismiss. Even more so since it came from an English teenage model. I was hanging out with her godmother during Paris fashion week about five years ago. As we left an event and passed a scrum on
VERSO, APRIL 2023, 288 PP. THIS NEWLY TRANSLATED collection of Izumi Suzuki’s short stories first published more than forty years ago is jaunty, odd, violent, femme-centric, funny—but what strikes me most is its freshness. A few charming period details (the presence of a Walkman, cassette tapes, a rotary phone, the
