Something very unusual happened while I was reading Burial, the latest novel from Neil Cross: I had the most extraordinary urge to turn to the end to find out how the story finished.
I honestly cannot recall another occasion when I have been tempted to commit this most heinous of crimes against literature. But there was something so disturbing, so broken-chalk-on-blackboard disarming about this story that I wasn't sure I could get through the full narrative to the conclusion.
Nathan is a provincial radio producer who attends the annual party of his boss, a one-time celebrity broadcaster, and makes a series of bad decisions involving a dying relationship, alcohol and narcotics that indirectly result in the sordid death of a young girl in the back of a car he has been making out in (alongside an acquaintance, Bob, who is "with" the girl when she dies, while Nathan is in the front seat).
Just as they bury her body, so Nathan eventually manages to bury the memory and move on with his life although now as a greeting card salesman. But Elise comes back, first metaphorically into Nathan's life and then physically as development of the woods where she is buried threatens Nathan's secret as well as his now-settled life.
In the meantime Nathan continues to take decisions that while understandable to a point, defy some of the norms of human behaviour and put him in situations that still now make me want to hide behind a sofa when I think about them.
His characterisation is one of the more clever and insightful I have read this year and is so skilfully handled it holds together a plot that might otherwise have been just that little bit difficult to believe.
As it is the plot boils mercilessly towards a dramatic conclusion and lingers in the mind long after the final page. I can't say I enjoyed this book - it was a times excruciating - but it was utterly compelling.
And, no, I did not turn to the back before the end. But I have no idea how I resisted it.
