Lolito
Ben Brooks
“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”
Available as Paperback, eBook
Age is just a number…
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.
“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
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”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
Ben Brooks
Ben Brooks was born in 1992 and lives in Gloucestershire. He is also the author of five other books Grow Up, Fences, An Island of Fifty, The Kasahara School of Nihilism, and Upward Coast & Sadie. Brooks’ work has been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in the Dzanc Best of the Web anthology. Lolito was a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize-winner in 2014.
“It is flourishes like these, and countless others, that deliver in Lolito a credible, often exquisite work sure to court at least a little controversy in its depiction of ageless (im)maturity. And though there may be some hot debate on the topic at the moment, Lolito won’t ever become a tiny corner forgotten”
Declan Tan
The Huffington Post