Ablutions

From the author of the Booker shortlisted Sisters Brothers - a dark, boozy and hilarious tale from the LA underworld.

Reviews

Evokes with good humour the lives of his crazed colleagues and clientele, whose nightly revels terminate in violence and vice ... Ablutions doesn't glorify alcoholism, but nor does it present a moral, skilfully dodging the traps it sets itself. That second-person narration, for instance, risks looking like a gimmick but you grow to view it as a symptom of the protagonist's self-obliteration. And where a more conventional novel might have added a dollop of backstory as a key to his pain, here there's nothing but a void