Skin Lane, page 31
A fiendishly taut little psycho-shocker’
WILL SELF
‘A raw, dark, highly dramatic narrative - a profoundly original meditation on thwarted desire’
PATRICK MCGRATH
‘Bartlett is a storyteller well aware of how to exert control over his audience. He wastes little time before demonstrating that he can, in a moment, stop your heart, or break it… deeply moving, it is an extremely fine piece of writing’
THE TIMES
‘Brilliantly eerie… constantly surprising… But it’s in his depiction of a specific kind of helpless and fearful love that Bartlett excels’
GUARDIAN
A wonderfully convincing portrait of the still workaday London, unforgettable moments in Skin Lane remind one of cinematic melodrama, equally of Douglas Sirk as of Jean Cocteau’
INDEPENDENT
At forty-seven, Mr F’s working life on London’s Skin Lane is one governed by calm, precision and routine. So when he starts to have frightening, recurring nightmares, he does his best to ignore them. The torments of his nights lead him — and the reader — deeper into a labyrinth of rage, desire and shame.
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Neil Bartlett, Skin Lane
