The Bird Room by Chris Killen

Will is getting cold. As he waits for his girlfriend Alice with a hat hanging from his erection, he thinks: "I should start again somewhere else." Such issues of displacement abound in this unsettling, darkly comic exploration of young love. Having recently quit his job, Will begins a frantic search for pornographic images of Alice on amateurs websites, fuelling his paranoia that she is falling for his friend – also called Will. Meanwhile, would-be actress Helen's encounter with a lonely "pervert" called (you guessed it) Will leads to a poignant climax. Chris Killen's debut drags us into a world of blurred identities and relentless unease; he offers us disparate pieces of his puzzle in a laconic style that seldom scratches far beneath the surface.