Marilyn’s Almost Terminal New York Adventure offers all the ingredients that have made Justine Ettler’s name to date: sex, drugs, tough women, bad men, and rough prose. Thankfully it does leave behind some, though not all, of the relentless violence of The River Ophelia. Marilyn is not as hell-bent on the same masochistic path as Ettler’s earlier heroine, Justine, and the novel admits a light­ness of tone which is initially refreshing.

‘This story about Marilyn’, the narrator informs us,

doesn’t start with her moderately immaculate conception or with her depraved adolescence ... or with that summer she spent clinging to a bobbing beyond-the-breakers surf­board off Australia’s most famous beach and squeezed orgasm after orgasm from between her tanned teenager’s thighs.