This was like a loose end of yarn on a sweater. You pull it and the string just gets longer and longer and the sweater just keeps unravelling until you're left with a pile of tangled string. You're not sure what's real and what's just a figment of a character's imagination. Your face hurts from being scrunched up in reaction to the things you're reading. It was bloody hard work. I can't imagine how hard it was to write.

There's a line in this book, "That's aggressive, but you see this hasn't been an easy book for any of us."

Yes. That. ( )

This is not a comfortable read but it is a memorable one, and I can understand why it was shortlisted for last year's Goldsmiths Prize, a prize that rewards innovative literature. Martin John is a serial sexual offender with only a tenuous grip on reality, and the book is a reflection of this confusion, full of repetition and typographical trickery, with plenty of pages that just contain a few words. I don't really feel qualified to write a more detailed review of this one. ( )

Skin-crawling and disturbing. Martin John is not a character whose mind I want to experience. In spite of how uncomfortable this is to read, there's no denying that Anakana Schofield has written an incredible book. And, unfortunately, this is also a book that is incredibly relevant, dealing with sex offenders and people who do not receive the help, support, and treatment that they should. ( )

The writing is good. But I found the plot unnecessarily opaque and by the end I found it a waste of time. The weakness of the main character is that at the end you still don't like him very much. ( )

Simply a fantastically written book. Cracking, lively writing that shows a different perspective on the world from the margins of a society that ignores, won't try to understand, and pushes the main character further and further out. It concerns Martin John, a man with a compulsion to expose himself in public and touch women and girls. Whilst the story is told from his perspective our sympathies fall to him in his illness -- good writing allowing us to get into the mind of someone we'd despise in real life. The long-term damage to his victims and family are not ignored either and our sympathies rapidly shift -- great writing not shying away from the complexity of dealing with mental health issues compassionately for all involved.

And its funny too! -- whilst dealing with a serious subject, humanising Martin John allows us to perhaps see a much milder form of our personal selves in the non-threatening compulsions and routines he is enslaved to. I'll just intrigue you to say these involve trains, newspapers, Eurovision, and Beirut and leave you read the book to find out more.

You might not think you want to spend any reading time with a man you exposes himself in public and bothers young women, but I'd draw you to this quote from part-way through the book:
"It was a time when people didn't see stuff. That was the time it was."
And at the very end:
"It was a time when people didn't ask as many questions. That was the time it was."
Anakana Schofield is asking these long overdue questions, and allowing us to see the society we were but seem to have collective amnesia about. In the UK this has risen to the surface through the recent and ongoing Saville enquiry focussed on celebrity broadcasters, conveniently forgetting that casual sexism and worse were rife among the general population. What are we failing to see now? What and who will we be tutting at and scapegoating in 20-30 years time? ( )