Just finished John Burnside's The Locust Room – a very curious read, oddly unbalancing. Set in Cambridge in 1975, it takes for its jumping off point the depredations of the (real-life) rapist who stalked the city for several months; his actions are seen through the eyes of Paul, an insomniac student who hangs around the edge of Cambridge society, avoiding friends, involving himself in unfulfilling relationships and quietly despising his mother.
I was quite prepared to find the subject matter unnerving, but despite a startling and extremely well-managed debut, the rapist is no more than a shadow on the book's borders; he disappears from the pages altogether around the halfway point. In the end, his absence disturbs far more than his presence could, and I found myself half-consciously projecting him onto the novel's other male characters - a neat trick from Burnside, if it was deliberate. But nevertheless, this hollow at the book's heart meant it lacked focus and, ultimately, direction; while Burnside's prose – he's an award-winning poet - is as lush and suggestive as ever, I ended up feeling that there wasn't a great deal backing it up. I love his poetry, but this is the first of his novels I've read and I didn't come away feeling compelled to go through his back catalogue – anyone else read him and prepared to convince me otherwise?
