Title: Weak Portrait of a Tormented Soul
Product review: Taylor tries hard to get the reader into the head of a likely insane loser in Lambdon Spa in the north of England, but too many of the relationships are insufficiently explained and lack credibility for the book to really work. He's semi-kept by a gay man who he no longer sleeps with, and it's not at all clear why the other guy tolerates him since they so openly despise each other. He's constantly spending massive amounts of money on a co-worker he's obsessed with, who is a class-A tease. Why he's so into her and why she leads him on is never convincingly explained. Ditto the sexual relationships he has. There are a few good scenes, but too much is unexplained--and it feels as if Taylor has left it all unexplained because he's unable to come up with anything plausible. There are a lot of better books that portray a soul tormented by obsession, anger and fantasy spiraling toward self-destruction--try Duncan McLean's "Bunker Man" for example.
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