Well, crikey. I've never read anything quite like this. It's very dark, very raw, tinged with humour and cynicism and a bit bonkers…literally and metaphorically.
Once I'd settled into the darkness, rawness and humour, I was cruising along fairly happily until about halfway through. Then I got a bit lost and confused. Probably as much as the main character, and narrator, Lucas. The comicality gets a little bit lost, then, in a rather disturbing plot.
An old friend, whom Lucas hasn't seen for twenty years, asks him for help to find the person who killed his mother. Not in the 'find him and hand him over to the police' way. In a 'I'll deal with him in a à la Lucas' way. This involves stepping over a number of bodies en route. But Lucas is mentally ill…and his grip on reality is slipping away from him…from the reader, too.
It's a bold plot for a debut novel, and despite my misgivings, this is an author with great promise. I have to admit, I've read a number of novels by Scottish authors, and they're often peppered with that unique Scottish wit and humour, which is what carried me through this.
I can't decide whether or not it was just a smidge too dark and twisted for me. But I can certainly say it's bizarrely compelling.
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