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The pacing in ''Naked'' is variable - at times this book is patient but absorbing and at others it's a real page-turner - and I think perhaps this makes it one for the bookworm more than the occasional reader. But I loved it. Really loved it.
Kevin Brooks writes so well from the female perspective anyone remember [[Lucas by Kevin Brooks|Lucas]]?. Lili, the book's narrator, is privileged in terms of wealth but impoverished in terms of stability and love. So she sticks like glue to the unpredictable and dangerous Curtis, even though she realises that the relationship is unsatisfactory right from the very beginning. An unfaithful, drug-addicted boyfriend is better than no boyfriend at all. Lili loves music for music's sake and so she finds real meaning in the band, but her contempt for the dissolute scene so ruthlessly exploited by the likes of Malcolm McLaren is thinly disguised. She shares these attitudes with William and the reader can see immediately how compatible these two are. But of course William's connection to the IRA brings complications even more dangerous than Curtis's obsession with fame and illegal substances.
This being Kevin Brooks, we don't expect the ending to be entirely happy. But it isn't entirely without hope. I thought ''Naked'' was a wonderful book - it gets down and dirty with the dirtiest but finds time for moments of heart-stopping tenderness, and it paints a vivid picture of a time today's teenagers will see as ancient history but whose emotional landscape matches their own, timeless, preoccupations. As soon as I'd read the last page I turned back to the beginning and read it from start to finish all over again. Not many books make me do that.
