BIG NOBODY

In mid-1970s London, a young woman talks to her posters of Marc Bolan and David Bowie about her plans to murder her father.

Kadis’ delightfully original debut novel is narrated by mordant misfit Constance Costa, aka “The Half Greek Imprisoned Daughter of The Fat Murderer.” Her father has earned his moniker by virtue of a car accident that killed Connie’s mother and two younger brothers. Now the two remaining family members are stuck with each other, all the more miserably since George Costa uses violent punishment to control his daughter’s behavior. As she confides to the poster of Marc Bolan on her bedroom wall, “The Autumn Term Disco is one week away. I just want to be there, like a normal [almost] fifteen-year-old…and that unreasonable lunatic won’t let me.”  She receives a reply: “Hm, I’d say being a lunatic and being unreasonable tend to go hand in hand”—but this, Connie fumes, “wasn’t Marc. It’s bloody David Bowie. David could be snitty and obscure and couldn’t resist sticking his beak into everyone else’s business.” While the Fat Murderer prevents her from attending the disco, he requires weekly attendance at Friday night community gatherings known as Greek Night (aka Freak Night), the only upside of which is that she gets “to see the one person in [her] life who didn’t make [her] want to vomit.” Vasos Petrides is an almond-eyed dreamboat who “had shown [her] his penis for the first time when [they] were seven”; the pair continues to explore the possibilities of romance. There’s also Auntie Roulla, who is not only aware of the Fat Murderer’s abuse but also suspects an even more horrible secret. There hasn’t been a novel this funny that contains an abuse plot since early Edward St. Aubyn, who’s a contemporary of Kadis, debuting in her 60s after a career in music journalism. She certainly hasn’t lost her grip on what it’s like to be 15: The way she keeps the darkest parts of the book burning hot behind Connie’s jokes, lists, nicknames, and wisecracks is both creatively daring and perfectly evocative of the melodramatic emotional shitshow that is adolescence.

My Big Fat Greek Coming-of-Age Novel, narrated by one of the great teenage curmudgeons of recent literature.