Loosen your belt

Helen Falconer takes the road to excess in Stephanie Theobald's ode to food, foreigners and lesbian sex, Trix
Trix by Stephanie Theobald

by Stephanie Theobald
352pp, Sceptre, £10.99

In Stephanie Theobald's third lovingly detailed ode to food, foreigners and lesbian sex, Mo is a Scarborough waitress who has finally given up waiting for her husband to stop being gay, and has set off for America on a consolatory road trip which she hopes to subsidise by writing a feature about the American breakfast. So far, the wasteful decadence she has encountered has shaken her to the core. At every service station, even the smallest drink is served in a cardboard bucket; the sandwiches are elephantine, yet come in packs of 10. Raised, like so many English children, by a thrifty postwar mother, she can hardly bear to witness such consumption.

But then she meets Ruby Rose, queen of the guzzlers, who decides to come along for the ride. From the moment Ruby lowers her magnificent rear end into the passenger seat, Mo's fate, gastronomically and sexually, is sealed. Ruby is a dominatrix - charismatic, dope-smoking, pill-popping and never without a Jack Daniel's in her hand. Having taken a serious shine to Mo, she becomes determined to introduce her mousy Brit friend to the groaning pleasures of excess, where a feast is a zillion times better than "enough". Why bother with the real thing, when you can have spray-on Easy Cheeze ("Cheesy. And darn proud of it")? Or spread Miracle Whip (mayonnaise sweetened with sugar) on those sandwiches, and tuck into the famous LYB, or "Loosen Your Belt" breakfast served up at "Daddy Ray's: the Taj Mahal of American Diners"?

Slowly but surely Ruby turns Mo on to the dirty face of beauty, even down to the wonder of cockroaches. On their wild ride to the Pacific coast the two women, strung out on Yellow Snake, pass under vast El Greco skies of crimson, blue and green - but who needs heaven when the sulphurous lakes of hell are as warm and purifying as hot springs? Gradually, Mo's defences crumble to dust. Her daily proximity to Ruby reduces her to a state of continuous sexual excitement, as the nail-biting journey towards that first kiss lasts for almost the whole book - a plot device not available to serious heterosexual novels for nigh on 100 years.

Actually, it is more of a first slap than a first kiss, as Ruby's hinted agenda of delights has always been of a firmly sado-masochistic nature. From Mo's sneaky reading of Ruby's diary, we learn of a childhood of abuse, but Ruby is adamant that her proclivities are independent of her past. "All that shit could not have happened in my childhood and I'd probably still be into rough sex - only I wouldn't have done it for money." The remaining question is, who will turn out to be the real dominatrix?

Theobald's first two novels both celebrated their central character's voyage of self-discovery through finding the love of a good woman. Theobald has a ringing authorial voice, determined to make herself understood. Yet despite her lack of literary pretension, she is an effortless, natural poet: "Some things become clear: lip-smacking, love-biting, thirst-quenching, toe-sucking ... ever- pleasing, never-ceasing, harmful, harmful, harmful girl."

· Helen Falconer's Sky High is published by Faber

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