The Body in the Library

The Body in the Libraryby Graham Caveney Published 30 May 2024 Cancer, tumour, cancer. The words fizzle and dissolve into nothing like aspirin in water. I exist in the third person. The room is blue. When Graham Caveney was a child the word cancer was unspeakable, only uttered in jokes told by people too frightened to say the word in any other context. Now the boy with perpetual nervousness is a fifty something man, and the oncologist in front of him is saying words

The spaceship Audition is hurtling towards an event horizon

It is a brash novel about deceit and love

may be a form of love

necessary reading

an uncanny venture into a world slightly tilted – a world where darkness is never far out of the frame

and by the end I was holding my breath

observing neighbors and the absurdities of the city

and thwarted idealism of their twenties

Lury’s writing is vivid and fresh

conservatism and so much more)

a deep-sea diver

the pathogenic force of a virus and the infectious pleasure of great writing