Lolito

“Lolito is the funniest, most horrible book I've read in years. I was blown away.”

“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.”

“Brooks is a master of this art.”

“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.”

“This is a totally convincing portrait of being a wayward teenager now, that only a teenager could have written.”

“Funny, witty and addictive, Lolito is a quirky and disturbing ball of energy that will consume readers until they have turned the last page. Brooks has created the most authentic teenage voice of the twenty-first century.”

“Lolito manages to be hilarious, thought-provoking, disturbing and ridiculous all at once and again proves that young Brooks is one of the UK’s most promising young writers right now—a possible Irvine Welsh of his generation.”

"Booze, drugs, porn, snuff videos, chat rooms, pedophiles: what one 15-year-old did over spring break. Lolito is the fifth novel from 23-year-old prodigy Ben Brooks… A shocking, funny, touching, book; a young writer with potential to burn.”

"Lolito is reminiscent of Superbad and Youth in Revolt... Etgar is one of the most compelling teenage voices in contemporary literature, with a seemingly endless capacity for imagination and wit."

"Etgar is painfully self-conscious and self-deprecating; he inhabits that familiar teen mindset where every little thing is the most crucial event in your life, until it’s not anymore, and then it’s sad and funny at the same time. His staccato narration, interspersed with references to pop culture and the Internet, manages to get at genuine teen anxieties while still being hilarious.”

“Lolito is a credible, often exquisite work sure to court at least a little controversy in its depiction of ageless (im)maturity… Lolito won't ever become a tiny corner forgotten.”

“If this all sounds like an episode of the British TV show Skins, well, you wouldn’t be wrong…both rely on the affect of grittiness for their appeal while simultaneously featuring teenagers who are as fragile as a Morrissey song.”

“Written in Brooks’s distinctively funny and ennui-infused voice, Lolito is a wildly entertaining narrative about love gone wrong that explores guilt while fully embracing, and exposing in an almost voyeuristic fashion, the dramas, thought processes, deplorable online behaviors, and attitudes of a regular male teenager.”

“Brooks acutely captures what it means to be a 21st-century youth. The seamless inclusion of Facebook statuses and online chats throughout the text captures the hybrid nature of a life lived partially online.”