Ruby and the Stone Age Diet

Title: Ruby and the Stone Age Diet
Author: Martin Millar
Published: 2010 by Soft Skull Press (but that's just this printing)
Genre: Urban angsty myth
Pages: 152


Guess it was inevitable that there would be a book by an author I love that I don't like. This is it. It may be partly due to the fact that I've been increasingly pissed off at everything for a few weeks now, mostly so while I read this, but... I just couldn't get a hold of this book. It had good bits and funny bits and short bits and some of the angst and desperation of Alby Starvation and some of the energy of Lux the Poet but... but.

It was like a book where nothing really happens. Sure, there's squatting and evictions and learning to use the diaphragm (that was a ridiculously hard word to type!) and gods and goddesses for everything from electric guitars to lonely people and werewolf stories!

But.

And it's not actually an issue that nothing happens, I've wanted to write something like that myself, and that's just life, grand things don't always just happen. But... I don't know.

I still love you, Mr. Millar.


"Later on I go home and Ruby stays. Close to our flat I am so full of things to cheer me up that I find myself lying face down in a puddle with a vivid memory of someone telling me that you can drown in only two inches of water.

"I struggle to my knees. Only an inch and a half, I estimate. A lucky escape. Four young men pass by, singing and shouting and causing a disturbance. I hate them. They ask me if I am all right and they go to a lot of trouble to help me home. I still hate them.

"Next morning I wake up in bed with the Great Goddess Astarte."


Oh, nameless protagonist, I know that feeling. But where's my goddess?!