Ned Beauman’s first two novels Boxer, Beetle and The Teleportation Accident were wonderfully wordy and esoteric highlights on the literary calendar. Strange, extremely well written and historically mind-bending, they were the sort of novels you’d find being passed around from friend to friend with an assertive plea to “read this weird book.” The Teleportation Accident cemented the love of critics and booksellers as it was longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker prize, and now he’s back and hopefully poised to make an impact on a wider audience with Glow. It’s a little more accessible and a little less complicated, but it still emits an oddball glimmer that causes it to stand out.
Raf is a hopeless and lovelorn young man who exists on the fringes of society, spending his time at laundrette raves ingesting whatever floats his way and walking the guard dog for the local pirate radio station. Like Boxer, Beetle’s Kevin Broom, who suffered from a rare (and real) condition that caused him to emit a fishy odour at all times, Raf has to deal with a similarly alienating (and also real) debilitation. Raf suffers from non-24-hour sleep/wake syndrome, which means his circadian rhythm is set at twenty five hours, instead of twenty four. Also like Kevin, Raf spends his time absorbed in internet message boards, but swops the Nazi memorabilia for the scientific analysis of various illegal substances.
A chance encounter with a mysterious young woman at a rave sets Raf in search of the origins of the new drug on the scene, Glow, almost by accident dropping him into the middle of a far-reaching conspiracy that stretches all the way to Burma by way of unmarked white vans and hyper intelligent foxes. It’s all very entertaining and well realised, as Raf starts picking up other outsiders and bumbling his way towards enlightenment. These characters are people you can root for, easy to empathise with and in Raf’s case, self deprecating and relatable.
Beauman is wonderfully self-indulgent, littering his paragraphs with dramatic and thoroughly unusual similes that punch through the text like a literary sandworm. He makes the drab and filthy side of London positively shine with vivid and otherworldly descriptions of everyday detritus and greying buildings, like a poetic ode to areas often forgotten about. It’s a constantly amusing and decidedly different novel that goes wherever it wants to, and drags you along for the ride.