"an illuminating narrative on the extremes of human emotions" - the Big Issue
Abacus (2004)
This is a book, I have come to realize, about betrayal, and less directly about different forms of voyeurism. Like Three Blind Mice, it is about language, though in a more subtle and diffuse way. It began with me thinking that all families have secrets, but that some secrets are more dangerous than others. The Dawsons and the McGowans are inextricably linked by a past filled with sexual deception, a present of professional vice. And everywhere by a man called Angel. When pianist Jacob Fox is led into this world, unwittingly he becomes Angel’s messenger, the bearer of increasingly damaging revelations. Gradually, he is forced to realize that everyone, from twelve-year-old Fred to the matriarch and prostitute Maggie, and even the escalating battle between legitimate business and the Soho vortex of sexual traffic, drugs, revenge, is affected by Angel’s tyrannical and amoral psychology.
Jacob ought to walk away, yet that would mean leaving behind both love and responsibility. It would also mean (though I am not convinced he lets himself see this) taking back into his other life an erotic compulsion that it couldn’t accommodate. But before he can make a final decision, Jacob is confronted by his own confused desire for retribution. The question then is how far anyone can penetrate and assimilate an existence not legitimately their own.
