The Evil Seed

by Joanne Harris Black Swan, HK$105

Joanne Harris is best known for Chocolat, a sickly sweet confection that portrayed small-town France in much the same way that pre-Spielberg Hollywood depicted Nazi Germany. The characters all speak English with outrageous accents and perpetrate every cultural cliche dans le livre.

Some claimed it was heart-warming stuff. So is a red-hot poker through the chest. For Harris sceptics, The Evil Seed is almost perfect. It is her re-issued debut novel, whose title seems to prophesy her reign of literary terror. And it is horrible, or at least horror. Our heroine is Alice, who no sooner moons about ex-boyfriend Joe than he appears with sexy new girlfriend Ginny. Generous to a fault, Alice tells Joe that Ginny is a drug addict.

Splicing the bad vibes is a second story of a vampire who likes nothing better than removing her raincoat to reveal her 'opalescent' body.

It is complete nonsense, but at least it is honest, pretentious and gloriously bonkers nonsense. Take this cadaver of a sentence: 'You must kill the thing you love, as I, in the end, was not wholly able to do.'

I wanted to hate The Evil Seed, which, in the end, I was not wholly able to do.