Clear by Nicola Barker

Yet another novel I had to read for class, and I didn't dislike it, but I was very confused by it. It's pretty funny, but I can't help feeling that there's something under all that humour and bantering dialogue that has majorly gone over my head. The plot revolves around an admin worker, Adair Graham MacKenny, who works near Tower Bridge at the time that David Blaine performs his starvation stunt with the clear glass box suspended for a crane. Adair uses Blaine as a way to chat up girls and eventually meets the shoe-obsessed Aphra, with whom he becomes weirdly involved and winds up reading aloud to her dying husband in the hospital. Everyone is obsessed with Blaine's stunt, observing reactions to it, discussing it, and trying to understand it. There are a lot of very strange and bizarre characters, whose behaviour actually makes Blaine look completely normal. I enjoyed the very brisk, witty, loose style, but I wouldn't say I liked it, especially because I have a persistent, disquieting feeling that I'm missing something very important about this book.