Patrick Carey

Like, as we've already said, nothing particularly untoward has even happened at the start of the book.

And yet there is this overwhelming sense of dread that continues to build.

The mechanics of which I haven't quite got my head around yet because I don't know why I enjoyed this book as much as I did, which is often a sign of a good book, I suppose.

That's right.

It's these kind of tiny little sort of bumps in the road that you're not necessarily conscious of as you begin the book that sort of begin to accrue until you get this very strange sort of

off-kilter view of the world, which I think is, in a sense, a kind of an alternative version of what Mosfick is always doing, which is essentially showing us how dark the world can be.

That's right.

And I think, you know, one of the things that's really interesting about this book is that in its initial pages might seem a bit like a conventional mystery, but what it's really about is the

is about creating stories and creating mysteries for yourself and creating reasons to get up every morning, essentially.

One book that really came to mind was Kazuo Ishiguro's book, The Unconsoled, which similarly is a long novel that hangs on a singular conceit, which is in the case of The Unconsoled, a man trying to get to a concert.

But the book itself is written totally in dream logic.

So I don't know if anyone's had dreams like this where you're trying to get somewhere, but you never quite make it because you keep getting sidetracked by people asking you questions or you keep getting turned around in the hallway and going the wrong direction.

And when you start reading this book, you sort of think, how on earth are we going to do this for 200, 300 pages?

But somehow, I think partially through commitment to the biz,

you're drawn into this kind of mysterious and uncomfortable world that is more about symbols than it is story, perhaps.

It was satisfying for me, and I think it will particularly reward readers who have read her other work because it stands in contrast to them.

Her other books are quite provocative in a traditional way.

There's a lot of sex and drugs and unpleasantness that happens in a kind of conventional way.

This is a much quieter novel.

It's a much more considerate and slow piece of writing.