Kelly + Victor

 A bar in Liverpool, January 2nd 2000: Victor, coming down from the recent global party, meets a girl. Some time later that night, he is in her bed. This, he thinks, is the best sex he's ever had. Kelly, coming down after the recent global party, meets a boy. Some time later that night, he is in her bed. This, she thinks, is the best sex she's ever had. So the story of Kelly + Victor progresses, through two mirror-image narratives: a story of the growth and spiralling intensity of a sexual obsession, traced to its inevitable, devastating conclusion. Set against a backdrop of urban despair, spiritual absence and a world swamped with pornography, this is a novel about yearning for union, for purity, and for magic and mystery in a world that denies them all. And it is, above everything, a love story - or all that twenty-first-century Britain will allow of one. Having established himself immediately with the under-class vernacular of Grits and the thrilling apocalyptic visions of Sheepshagger, Niall Griffiths moves, with this, his third book, into new, equally uncompromising territories - to the darker limits of human experience, the furthest edges of physical love.

Review: A very dark, disturbing - but also very moving - novel about sadomasochism.