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the complete review - fiction

Footsucker

by
Geoff Nicholson

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

A- : bizarre yet thoroughly enjoyable.

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "The idea has legs; its execution, sadly, is pedestrian." - Robert Potts, The Guardian
  
  
• "Nicholson keeps testing us, raising the stakes, forcing us to choose between the narrator's world, in which everything he does makes some kind of sense, and the world of public opinion, in which it doesn't. (...) Footsucker remains a provocative and elegant meditation on a question that haunts many people (and not just sexual deviants, by any means): Am I Everyman or Everywoman, or a pathological case ?" - Michael Harris, The Los Angeles Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Yes, -- and what else would one expect of Nicholson ? -- it is a book about foot fetishism. Though Nicholson's books always range far beyond their obsessions, using them only as a platform. But here he takes on a more ... unsavoury obsession. His anonymous narrator is a (relatively) unapologetic fetishist, and Nicholson allows him to lovingly wallow in the murky depths of his obsession.
       Striking a delicate balance between the awkward and the truly icky Nicholson manages to arouse some sympathy in our heroes odd obsession. His pursuit of feet is admirable and amusing (though always tinged with the thought that much of what he is doing is most inappropriate). The erotic thrill of the fine shoe is ... plausibly related, the foot-indulgences quite convincing.
       Obsession breeds excess, and excess leads to disaster: so Nicholson's novels invariably prove, and this one is no different. Fashioning a vague thriller plot around the foot obsession Nicholson allows his narrator to find a love who warms to his fixation (Catherine, with perfect feet) and a shoemaker who can create the finest footwear around them.
       The story is amusing enough, but it is the riffs on the foot fetish that make the book (with a perfect turn to close it out). In short, complete chapters, Nicholson offers a fascinating picture of obsession, love and sex. Fun indeed. We recommend it to any and all who are not put off by the title.

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Links:

• The Overlook Press publicity page
• Robert Laffont
• Excerpt

• Cuir Underground
• His Futile Preoccupations
• Les inRocks (French)
• Kirkus Reviews
• The Los Angeles Times
• The Modern Novel
• Le Point (French)
• Salon

• The complete review's Geoff Nicholson page.
• Official site

• Bedlam Burning
• Big Noises
• Bleeding London
• The City under the Skin
• The Errol Flynn Novel
• Everything and More
• Female Ruins
• Flesh Guitar
• The Food Chain
• Gravity's Volkswagen
• The Hollywood Dodo
• Hunters and Gatherers
• The Knot Garden
• The Lost Art of Walking
• The Miranda
• Sex Collectors
• Still Life with Volkswagens
• Street Sleeper
• What we did on our Holidays

• See Index of Contemporary British fiction
• See Index of Erotic, Pornographic, and Sex-related books

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About the Author:

       English author Geoff Nicholson, born in Sheffield in 1953, has written a flurry of novels. He lives in London and New York.

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