The Blue Mask — Joel Lane

'A novel of considerable power, its gritty drama of damage and disillusion well served by a hard-edged and often vigorously compelling prose style… an undeniably dark novel, yet its explorations move us towards a clearer view of the unsettling world we inhabit.'

â€" Guardian

'A poet of misfits, outsiders and the forsaken, his empathy for their suffering ever poignant.'



â€" Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual

'The reader of a Lane story can never escape the feeling of being located squarely in banal reality. It's this that makes any intrusion of the supernatural so shockingly effective â€" because the picture he creates is so palpable, and because we recognise some version of these lonely streets from our real lives.'

â€" Sublime Horror

Neil is a student at Birmingham University, living a typical life of gigs, clubs, politics, sex. One night, after a row with his lover, Neil follows a stranger onto a canal towpath. The stranger turns on him and attacks, viciously carving up Neil's face and leaving him mutilated beyond recognition. Neil's recovery is a journey through surgical reconstruction and sexual alienation. His attempt to track down his attacker becoming a search for his own hidden, destructive self; a search that leads him to question values he had always taken for granted.

First published in 2003 and long out-of-print, The Blue Mask is a hardcore emotional trip exploring the trauma of change and the nature of violence and of love..

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JOSEPH O'NEILL