Since the author of this short, anguished novel first self-published it in 2006, it has assumed cult status, with no shortage of readers testifying to its powerful effect. One can never know to what extent this first-person account of a broken-hearted advertising creative who once “liked hurting girls” before the tables were turned on him is autobiographical, and there’s a strong argument for it not mattering. However, if one chooses to read it as an unfiltered account of real events, the strangely feverish splurge of the narrative makes more sense. A fiction would have more logic, more shape; the wrongs done to Mr Anonymous would be more substantial and his outrage more proportionate. As it is, the reader becomes trapped inside the mind of a howling paranoid.
The realistic nature of his story, stumbling over what happened when, looping back and forth in time to pick up dropped threads, contributes to its impact: you could be in a New York bar, lending a sympathetic ear to a self-pitying tale of woe. Just don’t take the guy home with you.
• Diary of an Oxygen Thief is published by Corsair (£8.99)
