FICTION

FRESH GIRLS by Evelyn Lau (Hyperion: $17.95; 110 pp.) Canadian writer Evelyn Lau’s “girls” are prostitutes, dominatrixes, masochists; dark, depressed, crazed young women who have lost that voice within themselves--if they ever had it--that says, “Something feels wrong, don’t do this.” Often, fiction dealing with fringe-dwelling people has a trendiness just under the surface, as if it is hip to have no self-esteem. That is not the case with Lau. Her writing feels completely authentic, and, even more important, there is a push behind it, an urgency, that gives the impression that these stories need to be told. “Sometimes when I stand over you, when my heels are gouging into you, I . . . understand that each time your face wrenches with pain I am spreading a slow dark stain down the still-white years of my future, and that in that sense you are killing me and not the other way around.” Primarily known as a poet, Lau, at 24, has a larger, more interesting vision than many writers twice her age. It would be very interesting to see what she would do with a novel.