The Horned Man

An account of growing paranoia, this is a disturbing read. The narrator is an Englishman teaching gender studies and related literature in a New York university department. His routine rarely varies: there is a daily journey to and from his flat to work where he receives students in his office, gives classes and, from time to time, serves on a committee dealing with the establishment's policy on sexual harassment. All this is related in a dispassionate way, the style as flat as the life it describes. Sometimes events are mentioned which stir the reader's curiosity but they are listed along with the other minutiae and not explained. One example of this is his habit of leaving telephone messages to himself in order to relieve his loneliness and then erasing them without listening. Other odd things happen. First he begins to examine all the bits and pieces left in his office by the person who occupied it before him. Next he notices that they are being moved or have gone missing. He shifts the furniture about and comes to the conclusion that someone is hiding under his desk in order to spy on him. The reader struggles to accept these things and sympathize with the poor man and then a doubt creeps in. A growing suspicion that something is wrong with the narrator's perception of himself and of events gradually increases as more and more bizarre things happen to him and yet the deadpan manner of telling the story never wavers. It is this contrast between weird reality and the narrator's apparent unawareness of his strange behaviour which is so frightening. One passage which tells the story of his childhood stands out because the way it is written and the poignant circumstances described could come from another kind of novel altogether. These pages give the only clue to the madness. Cold, clear and scary. (Kirkus UK)