John Burnside: The Locust Room

By MICHELE HEWITSON

On the periphery of the genre, Burnside's haunting book has on its periphery a serial rapist who is stalking young women in the bedsits of Cambridge. The year is 1975 and the debate at parties and in the coffee bars is whether all men are rapists.

Paul is a young photographer who stalks the streets at night with his camera, looking for the perfect picture: "He couldn't visualise it, but he knew it had an abstract quality, an essential detachment from human concerns."

Paul himself has a detachment from the usual human concerns. He prefers to be alone. He has a girlfriend, they have never slept together and are unable to talk to each other. He has two flatmates he seldom sees. Clive, the rugby player, is suspicious of Steve, from whose room emanates a strangely feral smell. Clive turns vigilante. Steve's life unravels.

Paul's world is increasingly lived inside his head, and through the lens of his camera. The rapist remains invisible; Paul is searching - through his relationships with men and women - for some similar way of existing.

Sparse, strange and immensely readable.

Viking

$26.95