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Imelda is caught in a thirteen-year-old\u2019s world where sweets and a \u2018vodka and Britvic\u2019 are equally attractive, and nineteen-year-old farmer Danny Boy is both desirable and off-limits. The book begins with Imelda under the table at her mother\u2019s funeral, sucking sugar from a spoon \u2018shaped like a small spade\u2019. The spade-shaped spoon is well placed \u2013 a device for digging a grave, perhaps \u2013 since Imelda believes that she is responsible for her mother\u2019s death by wishing for it. However, the women in the \u2018thick tan tights\u2019, whom Imelda hears from beneath the table, are sure that her father Justin is blame for the death of his second wife; after twenty-nine miscarriages \u2018He might as well have put the gun to her head<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n Imelda lives at a petrol station combined with a shop and bar in County Cork with her two sisters Bertha and Agnes, and her father, Justin (never referred to as father, though the dead mother is \u2018Mammy\u2019). Popular culture references give us clues to the 1970s\u2019 setting, such as Aztec chocolate bars, maxi-dresses, The Exorcist<\/em>, and the cheesecloth shirt that Imelda wears, which Justin describes as a \u2018see-through blouse\u2019. Justin is troubled by the possibility of premature sexual ruin of his three daughters. Meanwhile, he is wooing Clodagh, a younger woman, and potential third wife.<\/p>\n Petrol<\/em>\u2019s back-cover blurb describes the book as \u2018a prose poem disguised as a novella\u2019. This is indeed a difficult book to categorise. It looks like a novella, with numbered chapters, the characterisation is sharp, and there is a narrative running through. There is a richness in the prose, which lends itself to reading one or two chapters at a time, in the way that you might read poetry, rather than consuming the book at one sitting, and Petrol<\/em> bears reading more than once, whereby deeper and different meanings can be gleaned, again as you might return to a book of poems. Martina Evans is best known as a poet, and there is much of the poet\u2019s eye, use of language, metaphor and rhythm in Petrol<\/em>. A group of \u2018rat-filled cats\u2019 have \u2018eyes like stringed lights\u2019; Ould\u00a0 Farrell has \u2018hands like a pair of coal tongs\u2019; and \u2018the roaring man had hair like someone had combed out a sod of turf\u2019. The adjectives used in relation to Granddad, who owns seventeen cats, are magnificent: \u2018Granddad was disgusted by the range\u2019; \u2018Grandad was glorified as we cut up corned beef and luncheon roll for the cats\u2019.<\/p>\n Evans\u2019s prose, in the voice of Imelda, does not draw breath. Sentences run over several lines, sometimes half-pages, yet not a word is wasted. Imelda is a bookish child, reading Anne Frank, and there is a subtle link between identifying with a trapped adolescent and Imelda describing herself as \u2018the Jew\u2019 of the family. She also reads Maupassant, as well as devouring the twenty-five Barbara Cartland books under her sister\u2019s bed: \u2018I lay down for the relief of reading them and thinking of Danny Boy even though I wasn\u2019t supposed to\u2019. \u00a0She lives in an atmosphere where sex and pleasure are hidden (well-masked in Cartland\u2019s novels) and tinged with guilt. Much is learned by eavesdropping and spying. It is difficult to know whether Imelda is shocked and disappointed that Clodagh does not \u2018stand up\u2019 for her when she overhears Justin criticising her for \u2018that weird fucking thing she has with the Jews\u2019<\/em>, or at seeing, from the hallway, \u2018four of them in the dressing table mirror, two of him lying on top and two of Clodagh\u2019. Afterwards, Justin says to Clodagh, \u2018I am sorry, I am sorry\u2019<\/em>. Later, when Imelda goes into the hay barn with Danny Boy, he shows her the puppies she has supposedly come to see. He hides one in his shirt: \u2018and Danny said that I had to take it out and he lay back laughing as if there was no such thing as guilt\u2019. She feels that Justin is watching her \u2018in disgust\u2019 as she unbuttons Danny\u2019s shirt.<\/p>\n Although there is movement in the narrative, there is a sense of things staying much the same, like the BP sign outside the petrol station, a recurring symbol, swinging on its pole, though, in the final sentence of the book, it \u2018creaked and creaked like a horror in the wind\u2019. Justin confronts Imelda about her liaison Danny Boy, as reported to him by Neily Sheehan, the owner of the rival JFK bar, who spied on them from his car as they walked hand-in-hand. In a reflection of the beginning of the book, when Imelda recalls wishing her mother dead, she now wishes the same for Justin: \u2018I was entitled to set fire to him with his own petrol some day\u2019. And the child at the beginning is now a young woman, having to explain to Danny Boy \u2018why a nineteen-year-old might go to prison.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Petrol<\/em> by Martina Evans is published by Anvil, 2012, \u00a38.95.\u00a0 Order your copy here <\/a>or\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n