David Hunt

I think all the words are very carefully measured.

In terms of a writing style, it reminds me a little bit of, strangely enough, William Gibson of New Romance of Fame in some of his later books where he has deliberately pared back all of his prose to write with a great economy of style.

And I find the prose in this to be compelling and beautiful.

Bits of it are pure poetry.

But I also find the really subtle analysis of human loss to be beautiful.

I think the idea of are all three narrators the projection of Will is a really interesting one.

And I've seen that suggested in a couple of reviews.

I didn't take that away from it.

It's really interesting that two of the narrations are written in the first person, both Will and Phoebe, whilst John Leal is only always referred to as John Leal, never by his.

It's written in the third person.

And it's like it's somebody writing an identity for himself because he's clearly none of the things that his narration claims to be.

Observing himself from the outside.

He makes it clear that he is trying to create himself as a projection of the beliefs of the disciples who follow him and that he's just as trapped and lost as the other characters in that he's trying to become something that other people don't.

think he is and he's trapped in that identity.

And you do get the insight of what it is to be in a cult where people come together and share these extreme experiences of kneeling down for an entire night on uncooked rice with their arms outstretched until they literally drop from exhaustion and pain.

And the sort of shared bonding of trying to find meaning through this sort of group unravelling of personality through group confessions and group penances, I found that sort of utterly chilling.

I love a bit of ambiguity.

There's nothing wrong with ambiguity.

I have, yeah.

There's the Nose Pixies, which is a story of...