Living Nowhere

John Burnside

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Corby, the industrial new town built around a vast steel works, draws many to the fires of its furnaces - in the hope of steady work, a better house, a fresh start. Amongst them are Francis Cameron, from Scotland, and his friend Jan Ruckert, the son of Latvian refugees. Though very different, they are both outsiders; alienated, intelligent and curious, they form a strong and lasting bond: two teenage boys finding their feet in a foreign place. But, violence hangs in the Corby air like the ash and the stench from the steel works, and when it comes down, it is sudden and lethal - with repercussions that will last a lifetime. Reading John Burnside's fourth novel is like reading a dream: slow and mesmeric, interrupted by shocking, arbitrary acts of violence and the revelation of mysteries. Brilliantly evoking the turned-on, tuned-out seventies, with LSD the vehicle to reinvention, "Living Nowhere" is a story of friendship and loss, about trying to make a pure connection with the earth through a miasma of contamination.The journey, at its centre, is not an escape from grief, but an attempt - through solitude, rootlessness and a lot of acid - to recover a sense of worth and go forward, finally, to a new life beyond the poison and the waste. Meditative, profound and exquisitely crafted, "Living Nowhere" is the finest novel yet from a writer at the height of his powers - a resonant, thrilling book that carries at its core a beautiful and terrible secret.