A Review of Jillian Luft’s “Scumbag Summer”

This spring I had the privilege of reading with Jillian Luft at a literary reading in L.A. hosted by Gabriel Heart, EIC of Beyond the Last Estate. It seemed fitting to me that such a rockstar prose stylist—Luft’s prose is lush and lyrical and often decadently filthy—would, herself, be so stylish. Dressed in a short leather jumper paired with knee highs, her hair in a shaggy bleached bob, she filled the stage with a feminine energy that, despite her diminutive size, was larger than life. Her writing struck me with its intensity, candor, and raw vulnerability, and after hearing her read an excerpt, I decided I needed to get my hands on a copy of Scumbag Summer, her debut novel from House of Vlad Press.