You know that a novel will focus on the dark side of life when it opens on a February day in Liverpool. Even though the weather briefly turns mild the scene is set and the narrator, Benson (undoubtedly a stand in for the author) is a teacher of creative writing whose own writing project is at a standstill. Unsworth has an uncanny ability to create a fictional world that keeps the reader interested, even as events seem to become a bit bizarre, in what will happen and why. I enjoyed this novel, written just before he published his great novel, Sacred Hunger. ( )