Apples

Apples, an unassuming debut novel plucked from the imagination of a remarkable new twenty-one-year-old talent, and published to rave reviews in London, is a surprising, affecting, ingeniously crafted little coming-of age novel that has critics calling Richard Milward the voice of the MySpace generation. As a distraction from sleazy male admirers, spiteful classmates, and her mother’s progressing cancer, Eve’s adolescent eyes are opened to a multicolored life of fumbling one-night stands, drug-fuelled clubs, endless varieties of candy-flavored cheap booze, and banal consumerist choices. She barely has time to notice Adam. Adam, however, notices Eve. While contending with sexual frustration, an asshole father, and increasingly compulsive behavior, is Adam too busy furtively reading porn in his bedroom to make his move on Eve?

A paean to the scattershot difficulties of growing up, the complications of friendship, and the consequences of hormones in overdrive, Apples is a deliciously pitch-perfect debut.