Slights - Kaaron Warren

Stevie, the somewhat disturbed central figure relating events in Kaaron Warren's fantastically readable novel, is a young woman with a few emotional and behavioural problems that stem from her relationship with her parents - a mysterious father, a cop killed at a young age in the line of duty, and her mother, who Stevie has accidentally killed in a car crash. The author nonetheless makes Stevie, for all her problems, her abrasiveness and her particularly twisted view of the world, real and sympathetic - a kind of twisted Holden Caulfield character who has the ability, or curse, to see through the phoniness of people and their behaviour, but who is wonderfully unable to prevent herself from speaking her mind about it. She has an idea of how the world should be and how things should happen, but like the back garden that she imagines one day being filled with jasmine, the reality is a rotting pile of manure and some troubling objects that lie buried beneath the surface. 

Stevie's outspoken nature and antisocial behaviour inevitably causes her some problems in real-world situations, making it particularly difficult to hold down a regular job, but it's the other world that Stevie is really interested in. In a couple of near-death experiences she has found herself in a dark room with all the people she has slighted in the past - relatives, friends and even passing strangers who she has managed to upset - all waiting to pay her back in horrible ways for the rest of eternity. Fascinated by what she experiences, Stevie wants to learn more, but to do that she needs to get close to people on the point of death, and she has a few ideas about how to make that happen. 

What is just so wonderful about Kaaron Warren's writing is how refreshingly different it is, making Slights a quite original and completely unpredictable psychological horror novel. A lot of this is down to the decision to relate events from the point of view of Stevie. The story doesn't follow a conventional path then (like Holden Caulfield, Stevie isn't going to give you any of that David Copperfield kind of crap), but relates to Stevie's frame of mind - not always reliable as there are some things she is initially unwilling to face up to - and her view of some troubling events in her past  Brilliantly written, remarkably rich in character and psychological insight, Slights is an edgy and sometimes darkly humorous look into one damaged mind (and a few others along the way), at families, at the little everyday little slights that manage to chip away at one's esteem and some bigger ones that leave much deeper scars.