Elle

<p><em>Elle: A Verse Novel</em> by Robert Sheppard is a fierce densely layered détournement refashioning Joseph Kessel's <em>Belle de Jour</em> through splices warpings and an unnerving overlay of 1960s Brighton scandal onto a surrealist template. Blending procedural method with pulp volatility Sheppard mines and retools the idioms of violence sex media and myth threading the ghosts of Buñuel Jeff Keen and the tabloid unconscious into a shattered many-voiced delirium. The book is both critique and enactment of representation: a work pursued by its maker stalked by its forms and shadowed by Christine. <em>Elle</em> is a hauntological lyric a summoning that won't let the archive lie still.</p>