Roxane Ward’s debut novel has the trappings of a provocative story – there’s the teasing title and tastefully erotic cover – but the reality of this tale of one woman’s foray into Toronto’s underground is somewhat less satisfying.

Everywoman Indigo Blackwell is approaching the big “three-oh” when she decides to trade in a respectable career in public relations for the uncertainty of film school. She also decides to ditch her self-absorbed writer husband after she catches him, on videotape, in a tryst with a male prostitute.

The racy premise is one of the novel’s strengths, as is Ward’s portrayal of urban ennui, corporate disillusionment, and yearning for artistic fulfillment. Her mild social jabs at Toronto’s media scene, which includes a local station called COOL-TV (a thinly veiled CITY-TV), are amusing.

The story, however, takes a long while to get started. Indigo’s first day at film school occurs just before the novel’s half-way point and her foray into S&M culture begins a full two-thirds in. Prior to that, Blackwell and her pals take their time chatting over dinners of Pad Thai and patio drinks – which could have been fine had Ward’s reportorial prose been more evocative. As it is, Blackwell is not a fully realized character, and her motivation for becoming an artist remains unclear.

When we finally get to it, Blackwell’s entrée into the S&M/underground art scene is a letdown: we are shown the familiar media images of piercings, tattoos, and drug abuse, but we don’t actually taste Blackwell’s experience of them.

Fits Like a Rubber Dress is reminiscent of Kathe Koja’s 1996 novel Kink, which plotted the carnal activities of 20-somethings in the gritty urban arts scene of Detroit. By comparison, Ward’s surface foray into the T.O. underground is considerably blander and, well, safely Canadian.