overall 19 votes: 
editor average: 
Servicing the Pole is the portrait of a New York stripper—a battle-worn misfit slogging her way through the city’s roughest clubs, watching as the job replaces her personal life, and secretly harbouring rock star ambitions. As the fast-paced night life’s deceptive promises of easy money gradually give way to the harsher realities of addiction and prostitution, Emily must decide—is . . .
overall 3 votes: 
editor rating:
Eddie, an ordinary guy, with an ordinary life in an ordinary world decides one day he is tired of the ordinary life. He makes a brash decision to try serial killing on for size. Eddie fails miserably and in the process hooks up with a group of new friends whose lives are less than ordinary are happy to take the . . .
What first drew me into Servicing the Pole was the quick, succinct voice of the character. It is written in first person present tense—something that usually bothers me—but I scarcely noticed it when I began to read.
Servicing the Pole isn’t a happy story—in fact, most of the time I found [more . . .]
If Servicing the Pole can be summed up in one word, it is just that; stark. From the uncompromising prose to the embittered views of the protagonist to the repeated, soul-crushing pathos of the story itself.
Shaw plays with the reader like a cat with a mouse. The unnamed protagonist finds [more . . .]