The bizarre happenings in The Geek are set on a Greek island in a Gothick atmosphere of unexplained death, unmotivated violence and heavily charged sex. A sandy-haired American called Boot drinks immense quantities of beer and ouzo and finds a dead girl on a beach. A patchy-bearded monk called Lukas dreams 'of a hymen tearing with the sound of a ripping sheet'. An opium-smuggler seduces a 14-year-old girl who gives off a 'crystalline' smell. The sea is 'glassine'. Craig Nova has a feel for heat and sweat and blood and dust, but clarity and character are lost in an un-Aegean fog. On the last page, Boot bites off the head of a live chicken and thinks: 'I'm not even curious whether it was a matter of loss or victory.' By then, my own curiosity had evaporated, too.

John Mellors, "Stern Stuff," in The Listener, Vol. 96, No. 2485, November...