Martin John by Anakana Schofield

'Caitlin might call him MJ if they were ever on speaking terms. He doesn't think much of her harping on about her boyfriend trouble and her wine glasses and her dining-room table. But he has a file on her.' Martin John regards the broadsheet lifestyle columnists with a sharp disdain. It is unlikely Martin John would ever speak to a female journalist, though, or any woman; Martin John prefers human contact of the more criminal kind. He is, as is gradually revealed in Schofield's deeply unsettling – and unspeakably comic – second novel, the worst kind of sexual predator.

Sent to London by his 'Mam' (a presence of Norman Bates grotesquerie), Martin John spends his routine-driven days adapting to the city and plodding through his miserable job. He outwits the Meddlers, navigates the troublesome Baldy Conscience (his shadowy flatmate) and plots strategies for disguising his very public molestation endeavours. As his paranoia increases and Schofield reveals the true horrors of his depravity, our innate repulsion for her protagonist slowly turns a mirror on us all. While the authorities continue to allow Martin John to slip his leash, his eventual downfall is less a celebration and more an inarguable indicator of the deeper malaise. Narrated from an ingeniously skewed point of view – a blurry, abstract third person – that disorients and disturbs, Martin John is a work as easy to devour as it is difficult to stomach.