Niagara, by Mary Woronov

A Chelsea Girl's dark imagery and even darker humour

Mary Woronov must have the ultimate cult CV. In the 1960s she starred in Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls, performed notoriously with Nico and the Velvet Underground, then acquired and kicked a drug addition. Her many film credits include Eating Raoul. She has been a painter, directed pornographic films, and written Swimming Underground, a memoir of her years as a Factory habituée. She has also published two novels, Snake and Niagara, her new work.

I remember her at Max's Kansas City, the tallest woman in the restaurant, with a huge dog, striding towards Warhol's table in the subterranean back room. She still emanates a poise and nous that mark her as one of the Aristocracy of Experience.

Her sense of tragic absurdity imbues Niagara with dark imagery and darker humour. Molly, Woronov's heroine, is a malcontent, first a playground reject, later a woman for whom nothing is ever enough. She grows up beside Niagara Falls and its spirit-ridden forests, where she and half-brother Kenny create a world of terror and romance. They are obsessed with a local legend of an Indian maiden, sacrificed to the falls, whose lover follows her into a spectacular death which becomes the novel's leitmotif.

Molly's adored but rejecting Chinese mother plays Dragon Lady to Dad's benign, bumbling drunk. She works nights at the casino, a place as drenched in atmosphere as a Forties film noir, where she is queen of the gaming tables.

Molly is a brat but a clever one. Even so, she is duped by her smarter brother into believing first that he loves her and then that he's dead. Six years later she's in southern California, a misanthropic bad mouth driven by grief and rage, cruising the freeways in an alcoholic haze. She has married Bobby, her high-school sweetheart, now a prosperous car salesman. A wonderfully surreal and funny first chapter finds her drunk and deranged in a supermarket, begging the manager not to evict her.

Her Dad's death, her mother's Alzheimer's and a weird blonde send Molly careering back to Bobby, and new rejections. But Niagara's roar remains the soundtrack of her existence. Woronov spirals off into fantasies, led by stray observations. But she's so imaginative that these riffs are always engaging. Though the writing occasionally slackens, she excels at arresting similes. Los Angeles Christmas angels "sway from the palm trees like dressed up rats with wings".

With such a compelling narrative voice, the dialogue can feel second best. Often there isn't enough differentiation in speech. Kenny's talk does not measure up to his acclaimed charm, wit and intelligence, and we're forced to trust Molly's assurances of his charisma. However, what she says about herself convinces absolutely.

Molly/Woronov's candour can be frightening. You sense she has been to the bottom of herself and might be more at home there. She confesses to killer instincts: "I just wanted to taste the blood and gnash my teeth in ecstasy." Few civilised mortals would admit the same. The finale elicits her best writing. Like a runner or an opera singer, she has kept power in reserve, and spent it on the last tremendous chapter.