The Deadly Space Between

Toby Hawk is 18 and preparing for his A-levels. He lives with his youthful artist mother - with whom he has a disturbingly Oedipal relationship - and not far from his great-aunt Luce, a fabric designer, and her partner Liberty, a barrister. Apart from the shadow cast by Toby's unknown and hostile grandparents, all seems peaceful and contented. Then Toby's mother starts coming home smelling of cigarette smoke and odd messages are left on the answerphone, and he realizes that she is having a relationship with a man. Toby is consumed by jealousy, which when he meets the man - Roehm - turns to a deep unsettling attraction. But there is something mysterious about Roehm, and as his influence over the family increases the world around Toby starts to dissolve into incomprehensible fragments. This is an edgy, unsettling book, combining the beautifully observed details of everyday life and feeling with the powerful primeval forces represented here by the stories of Oedipus and Frankenstein and Freud's searches into the unknown. Duncker shifts scene effortlessly between the modern world of A-levels and the Internet and the timeless expanses of Alpine glaciers. Towards the end she loses her focus a little as the supernatural elements threaten to overpower the story, but it is always rooted in the intense, intensely physical relationship between Toby and his mother. Uncanny, disturbing and riven with symbolism, this is a novel which will insinuate its way into your consciousness and refuse to be dislodged. (Kirkus UK)