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UNINVITED by Richard House

UNINVITED

by Richard House

Pub Date: June 1st, 2001
ISBN: 1-85242-438-9
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail

Second novel from British author House (Bruiser, not reviewed): an intricate, tangled tale about two weeks of romance and violence in squatters’ London.

Ian is a new face in the London demimonde, squatting with two others in a house scheduled for renovation while working as a temp in a government benefits office. In the matter of a few days, his squatmate Malc is hospitalized after falling down stairs in suspicious circumstances, Ian quits his job (he doesn’t like being reprimanded for making mistakes), and police evict the squatters. Luckily, Ian can turn for financial support and a place to sleep to his older, more settled friend Gordon, who fancies him. Ian begins to realize that something sinister was going on at the squat involving Malc’s thuggish brother Terry, but although he finds some clues (a list of names, a bunch of pills), what exactly happened eludes him. He’s sidetracked by his new job as a bike messenger, which he enjoys for the mobility it provides as well as the strange new world it reveals. And he’s attracted to alluring South African/Irish Peter, a fellow messenger with a professional attitude who got Ian the gig after a chance encounter on the street. They begin a tender, tentative relationship just as Ian finally pieces together the reason for Malc’s “accident”: a benefits scam by Terry, whose accomplice was the now-jealous Gordon. In the marginal world Ian inhabits, this knowledge makes him a marked man.

The heady first days of a relationship and the daily hardships of a life on the edge create narrative tension that builds steadily but in unexpected ways: the result is a story memorable in its complexity and depth.