Ann Wood

This is a version of what I call an "id book." Evoking Freud's concept of the unregulated locus of desire, id books center on a protagonist who meanders through situations instinctively and intuitively, driven mainly by desires and emotional foibles.

Unlike many of the id books/authors to which its back matter compares "Bolt Risk," however, this novel relies less heavily on its central character as a locus of interest. The protag of "Bolt Risk" is actually rather uninteresting as a person. Unlike, say, Lydia Lunch's lead in the similarly-themed "Paradoxia," she is essentially a cipher who pretty much has nothing to say and doesn't try to.

Absent a strong emotional/intellectual through-line, this novel's main source of interest for readers may be finding out what happens next in the protag's train wreck of a life. In this regard, I found it mildly entertaining. I would suggest expecting from it what you would get from the journals of someone like Courtney Love.… (altro)