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“... so ‘ill at ease’ in yourself? You might do worse than get into the surveillance industry, Virginie Despentes suggests in Apocalypse Baby, spying on the unhappy teenage children of rich Parisians. The sector is booming and dullness and directionlessness are a plus. Lucie has been working as a snooper for two years now: ‘A kid can’t smoke a ...”

“... white, but mostly still there. It’s Paris, 2014. When we meet him in the first volume of Virginie Despentes’s trilogy, Vernon is about to be kicked out of his apartment after losing his job running a record shop called Revolver – a victim of Napster. For a while he kept up with the choreography of the French welfare system – applying for ...”

“... novels that have sold well in the English-speaking world, by authors such as Michel Houellebecq, Virginie Despentes and Frédéric Beigbeder. But even by these standards, Garcia’s debut cuts a dash. Hate confidently re-creates the Paris gay scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, along with the wider political disappointments and subcultural ...”

“... that Jesse’s sex work isn’t altogether alien from the writerly life to which he aspires. Virginie Despentes makes the case for the resemblance in her polemic, King Kong Theory:There is a genuine connection between writing and prostitution. Emancipating yourself, doing that which isn’t done, opening up your private self, laying yourself open to ...”