NIGHT PILLOW

Hugh Rae wrote Skinner, a glum, grim dossier of a psychopathic killer, and this one emerges--barely--from the rough underside of Glasgow where Alice, seventeen, while fooling around in a field with Malcolm (weeds, broken stalks, cattle dung) is raped by one of two boys on a motorcycle. Malcolm is clubbed, but later is sufficiently heroic to go through with the necessary marriage which neither wants with Alice's brother, Douglas, a hard core bully, threatening both. The baby is born while the young couple live with Malcolm's parents; later Alice runs into the younger brother George--the innocent one of her two assailants; and still later one of their friends tells the truth to Alice's father who runs amok in the brutal battue which concludes these drab proceedings....If, like Alice, you're caught--you will read this but the original inducements seem slim and this makes few concessions to spectator sensibilities.