Told through the fragmented recollections of Dennis “Spider” Cleg, McGrath’s novel follows a man recently released from a psychiatric institution as he attempts to reconstruct his past.

As the book floods with memories of childhood and violence, whilst his parents shift and contradict themselves, the reader is left to navigate a mind that can’t reliably separate event from invention. McGrath works in a tight psychological register; that late-20th-century British gothic mode—urban, internal, and claustrophobic—where horror comes from the structure of thought rather than anything external.

Viking paperback edition, 1991 (early printing; number line present but not a first). Light general wear and slight edgewear; clean internally.