The Blue Mask - Tapa blanda

?Lane's poetical powers of description reveal themselves... a jet-black, strangely plausible imaginary chapter in rock mythology? The Times 'The Blue Mask takes an intensely personal slant on the big themes of love, identity and retribution, and turns them into something that is both moving and original... the controlled prose honours the complexities of Neil?s struggle to differentiate between what he is and what has been done to him? New Statesman ?I was hooked by Lane?s doomy account of life on the gay/student West Midlands front line, its soundtrack a dismal hum of 1990s indie music? DJ Taylor, Books of the Year in the Independent 'The Blue Mask sites itself in a territory Joel Lane has already made his own, where Left politics, music and gayness intersect in a Midlands landscape whose unmotivated violence is a micropolitics in itself, a form of entertainment, a way of keeping yourself alive in the face of economic and political despair.His prose is as sharp as ever, his imagery savage? Time Out ?This is a novel of considerable power, its gritty drama of damage and disillusion well served by a hard-edged and often vigorously compelling prose style? Guardian ?This novel, like the author?s first, is moving and affecting and rewards through the truthfulness of the writing and genuine insight into people?s minds and behaviour? Gay Times

Neil is a student at Birmingham University. He looks like a cross between Morrissey and Johnny Marr ? equally attractive to girls and men. Gigs, clubs, politics, sex. Typical student, really. One night, after a row with his lover, Neil follows a stranger onto a canal towpath. The stranger turns on him and attacks. He viciously carves up Neil?s face leaving him mutilated beyond recognition. Neil?s recovery is a journey through surgical reconstruction and sexual alienation. His attempt to track down his mysterious attacker is a search for his own hidden, destructive self ? a search that leads him to question values he had always taken for granted. The Blue Mask is a hardcore emotional trip that explores the trauma of change and the nature of violence and of love. It confirms Joel Lane?s place in the pantheon of rising stars of British fiction.