These Are Only Words

Simon R. Biggam's narrator is a city-centre shop worker who cultivates a facade of blandness to hide a secret life of watching strangers and colleagues.For him, watching is an art form at which he can excel. From snooping around the staff room and eavesdropping to assuming alternative identities and fitting high-tech surveillance equipment in homes, he'll stop at nothing to invade the lives that he observes and records.

As his life becomes increasingly entangled with those he is documenting, his obsession with the tragic story of a nineteenth-century Frenchphotographic pornographer begins to inspire him to go beyond watching and become a participant. An urban chameleon, a Tom Ripley for the new millennium, an insanely gifted technofreak - Simon R. Biggam has created a sociopath for our time. These Are Only Words is a chilling dissection of identity and alienation from a bold new talent in contemporary fiction.

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