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A while ago I heard that the author of this would be appearing at a local book festival, so interested, I looked up the synopsis of his debut novel. I love transgressive style novels and was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that this was of a similar vein.

First of all though, it's not a novel, more of a novella, coming in at 128 pages. Specifically, the plot was about a batch of dodgy ecstasy pills that the protagonist, Donal, had come into possession of, being a small-time drug dealer. Unaware that these pills were from a bad batch, he proceeded to hand them out to his friends at a party, and one young man died shortly after taking it. Everyone else who took the ecstasy tablets that were handed out that night (including Donal) became ill and was hospitalised, but luckily survived. At the beginning of the novella, Donal is leaving his mother’s home where he recuperated after a stay in hospital himself after taking one of the pills. He quickly becomes afraid for his life after hearing rumours that a relative of the boy who died blames Donal for his nephew’s death. The rest of the novella concerns how Donal deals with this. It was set in my own city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Sense of place was excellent and definitely the strongest aspect.

The main thing I’ll say is that this was a strange novel, and if ever a book was accused of being uneven, this is it. I’m trying really hard here to think of how to put this, but I can’t! This is probably the most difficulty I’ve ever had writing a review. I can’t even say if I enjoyed it or not. I'm really struggling here!

It was definitely a great idea for a story considering that this actually happened here in Belfast last year; which I assume is where the idea for the plot came from, but the execution was so scattered that much of the power of the story was lost. For example, the paramilitary tie-in was well done, but like so many other themes within the narrative, this never came to any kind of satisfactory conclusion. Ideas were almost launched at the reader and never subject to any kind of logical treatment. Random is the word I think best describes this novel.  A lot of random events were depicted, from Donal’s lifestyle, to his interactions. The ending really defies a satisfactory explanation as well, so I won’t bother!

For fear of me getting too frustrated thinking about this novella, I’ll end it there, but just say that while this was based on a solid premise, it’s execution was so scattered that it missed it’s intended mark by a frigging country mile! This was unfortunate, because the bones of a good story was there, it just needed a lot more work.