March 3, 2006 (From "Bookmarks: Brief reviews of new and overlooked books") Ignore the fact that it has been nearly a year since Nellcott is My Darling first unbowed from a Canadian small press: this is a book that has slowly garnered tons of positive acclaim in the Great White North and picked up one very significant award nomination, making it more relevant than ever. Few people, however, seem to have read Nellcott. Don't be one of them. This is a gorgeous, heartwarming, and heartbreaking novel. It is a feminine bildungsroman, a spiritual cousin to Broken Social Scene's "Anthems for a 17-Year-Old Girl". And, one hopes, a novel that hipsters and readers of all stripes should be talking about in the years to come. Surface-wise, the story is an inverse of one of the oldest archetypes in the book: virginal first-year university student Alice meets and falls in love with bad-ass record store clerk Nellcott in early '90s Montreal. Though the girl-meets-boy story is deceptively simple, it is almost pitch perfect. Fried has a knack for the small detail, both of the city she lovingly writes about and of human relationships, the butterflies of falling in puppy love. Early on in the novel, Fried intimates, "Alice opened the top drawer of her wooden dresser and checked out her underwear. She had about ten cotton pairs that her mom had bought her in bulk. She got out a pair of scissors and cut the little bows off all of them." Precious. One could make small quibbles about the characters: Nellcott, for one, doesn't come across as a wrong-side-of-the-tracks kind of guy until the plot calls on him to act that way. Strangely, that's also the beauty of this book. One really truly does see the world through the eyes of Alice and her idiosyncrasies. In a way, the reader grows up with her as a person, and makes certain revelations at the precise same time that she does. That's stunning. In fact, through Alice, the adult-child protagonist, Nellcott seems to be all about growing up too slowly in a society when everyone seems to be all grown up too soon. Nellcott was recently nominated for a Canadian Governor General's Award for English Fiction, which is one of the highest honors a Canuck writer can land. (Fried now lives and teaches English writing at two community colleges in Greenboro, North Carolina.) While Nellcott didn't win the so-called GG, keep in mind that this is a debut novel from a very young author now only in her Christ year of 33. Fried was up against established writers like Charlotte Gill and veteran journalist/novelist David Gilmour, the latter of whom won. Why a major American publisher has yet to scoop up this book or its authoress is a bit unclear. Nellcott, given the Montreal setting, is the literary world's equivalent of an Arcade Fire or Wolf Parade record. Nellcott is a darling, it is literary gold. Both Nellcott and Nellcott are something both you and Alice need in your life right now, as hard-to-find either might be in this sometimes crazy, mixed-up world. - by ZACHARY HOULE Website © Golda Fried. / All rights reserved.