"What makes the achievement special is the way in which warped adolescent yearning is interwoven with a very different and repressed yearning, that of Malcolm's Aunt Fiona (who is) an archetype of inner corrosion and suffering."-Books in Scotland

Malcolm's father dies, and the boy drifts into a fantasy world without pain or love. His aunt, meanwhile, has long been imprisoned in her own private rituals of fanaticism and terror. Together, they enter a hell of love perverted into pain and desire.