As the two plots begin to converge, however, that effort, its careful attention to the apparently mundane conversation between Nicholas and Chloe--Sunday morning conversation over the newspaper report of the new London Ripper, for example--begins to pay off. Described as a writer who can make the "ordinary remarkable", Duncan has managed to bring the commonplace strangeness of sexuality into contact with the different extremes of sexual violence in an uneasy, but finally compelling, novel. --Vicky Lebeau