The Blue Mask

Neil is a student at Birmingham University. He looks like a cross between Morrissey and Johnny Marr ? equally attractive to girls and men. Gigs, clubs, politics, sex. Typical student, really. One night, after a row with his lover, Neil follows a stranger onto a canal towpath. The stranger turns on him and attacks. He viciously carves up Neil?s face leaving him mutilated beyond recognition. Neil?s recovery is a journey through surgical reconstruction and sexual alienation. His attempt to track down his mysterious attacker is a search for his own hidden, destructive self ? a search that leads him to question values he had always taken for granted. The Blue Mask is a hardcore emotional trip that explores the trauma of change and the nature of violence and of love. It confirms Joel Lane?s place in the pantheon of rising stars of British fiction.