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The Blue Mask

The Blue Mask

by JoelLane (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2003

    $3.24
Synopsis

One night, after a row with his lover, Neil follows a stranger onto a canal towpath. The stranger turns on him and attacks. He viciously carves up Neil's face, leaving him mutilated -beyond recognition. Neil's recovery, through surgical reconstruction and sexual alienation, forces him to question every value he's ever had, and his attempt to track down his mysterious attacker is a search for his own hidden, destructive self. "The Blue Mask" is a hardcore emotional trip that explores the trauma of change and the nature of violence and love.

Brought up in Birmingham, England, Joel Lane is a graduate of Cambridge University. He won an Eric Gregory Award for Poetry in 1993. His first novel, From Blue to Black, was published to critical acclaim in 2001.

$3.24

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 224
 Edition: Main
 Publisher: Serpent's Tail
Published: 23 Jan 2003
ISBN 10: 1852426888
ISBN 13: 9781852426880

Media Reviews
?Lane's poetical powers of description reveal themselves... a jet-black, strangely plausible imaginary chapter in rock mythology? The Times 'The Blue Mask takes an intensely personal slant on the big themes of love, identity and retribution, and turns them into something that is both moving and original... the controlled prose honours the complexities of Neil?s struggle to differentiate between what he is and what has been done to him? New Statesman ?I was hooked by Lane?s doomy account of life on the gay/student West Midlands front line, its soundtrack a dismal hum of 1990s indie music? DJ Taylor, Books of the Year in the Independent 'The Blue Mask sites itself in a territory Joel Lane has already made his own, where Left politics, music and gayness intersect in a Midlands landscape whose unmotivated violence is a micropolitics in itself, a form of entertainment, a way of keeping yourself alive in the face of economic and political despair.His prose is as sharp as ever, his imagery savage? Time Out ?This is a novel of considerable power, its gritty drama of damage and disillusion well served by a hard-edged and often vigorously compelling prose style? Guardian ?This novel, like the author?s first, is moving and affecting and rewards through the truthfulness of the writing and genuine insight into people?s minds and behaviour? Gay Times
Author Bio
Born in Exeter in 1963 but brought up in Birmingham, Joel Lane is a graduate of Cambridge University. He won an Eric Gregory Award for Poetry in 1993, and a collection of his short stories, The Earth Wire, was published in 1994. With Steve Bishop, he has edited Birmingham Noir a collection of crime stories set in the Midlands.