Lolito

This is a Jerwood fiction uncovered prize 2014 winner. She’s online. ‘I booked a hotel,’ I say. ‘Near Marble Arch.’ ‘That sounds great, hon. I can’t wait to see you.’ ‘Yeah. Me too.’ ‘I’m vaguely nervous.’ ‘Don’t be.’ Do be. I’m a child. Lolito is a love story about a fifteen year-old boy who meets a middle-aged woman on the internet. When his long-term girlfriend and first love Alice, betrays him at a house party, Etgar goes looking for cyber solace in the arms of Macy, a stunning but bored housewife he meets online. What could possibly go wrong…? Hilarious, fearless and utterly outrageous, Lolito is a truly twenty-first century love story.

Reviews of Lolito

* My God, Brooks is a frightening young talent. In Lolito, he creates a multi-coloured, grubby little world that I'd really hate to read about if I was a parent. Magnetising, funny and disturbing, his prose is infectious and highly addictive. I loved it — TIM KEY * Lolito is the funniest, most horrible book I've read in years. I was blown away — NICK CAVE * I love Ben Brooks. And Lolito is really something else. A twisted age-gap love story that is deadpan and grubby and strangely poetic and funny and wrong and also very right. It is like how The Graduate would have ended up if Dustin Hoffman had watched a lot of Loose Women and drank Strongbow and spent too much time on the internet — MATT HAIG * Grow Up is absolutely knockout – Brooks has the timing of a genius stand-up comic. Top class — RICHARD MILWARD * Ben Brooks is a magical imp who pumps out dark nuggets of poetry and makes you snort with laughter — NOEL FIELDING * The most convincing portrayal of the adolescent mind since Vernon God Little — EWAN MORRISON * This is a totally convincing portrait of being a wayward teenager now, that only a teenager could have written Dazed & Confused * Funny, witty and addictive, Lolito is a quirky and disturbing ball of energy that will consume readers until they have turned the last page The List * Both warm and uncompromising, Lolito will be as entertaining for young adults as it is educational for older readers. And if some aspects of the world Brooks inhabits seem alarming, I can't think of a writer I would rather have as my guide — Alice O'Keefe Guardian * Ben Brooks made me think that I'm glad I was fifteen in 1974 rather than now. I'm not actually that crazy about being fifty-four right now — Jim Murdoch The Truth About Lies * Brooks is a master of this art — Helen Rumbelow The Times