Nicola Barker — Clear: A Transparent Novel

Harper Perennial 2005 Paperback, 346pp. On 5th September 2003, New York illusionist David Blaine gets into a small Perspex box next to the River Thames and begins starving himself. 44 days later, he comes out again, four stone lighter. This much is clear. Yet the huge crowds which gather to sneer and worship and get drunk and throw eggs seem to have very different ideas about what - if anything - this macabre spectacle might mean. For some it's a religious experience. For others it's the perfect excuse for a post-pub punch-up. For Adair Graham MacKenny - a 28-year-old fashion victim whose uber-cool landlord is giving him an inferiority complex - the human zoo which surrounds Blaine is simply a great place to pick up girls. Until an exquisitely shod woman with a plastic bag full of Tupperware calls him a pimp. And Nicola Barker's riotous peep-show of a novel opens out into a hilarious and thought-provoking portrait of a world of illusion, delusion, celebrity and hunger. (ISBN: 9780007193615). Good.