A good man once told me that there’s something strange and insular about peninsula communities – and that’s definitely true of Innertown, the setting for John Burnside’s remarkable, genre-defying novel. Innertown gives the impression of being totally cut off from any sort of wider society, ostracised for the legacy of pollution left by the giant chemical plant that dominates the town. Left to their own devices, the people of the Innertown seem resigned to cancers caused by the toxic legacy of the plant, and apathetic about the decay and pollution surrounding them. The great white hope is the Homeland regeneration project, but it’s not changing the bleak nature of life for most.

The people of the town are living under more than just the shadow of the chemical plant – for the last three years, every summer, a teenage boy has disappeared from the Innertown. The constable, Morrison, is in the pocket of property mogul Brian Smith (the fact that Smith wangled Smith’s promotion from factory security guard to policeman tells you a lot about the kind of place we are dealing with), and no-one believes his glib explanations that these boys have gone to seek their fortune (as if to leave Innertown means never coming back). Morrison, who knows he is in over his head, has been concealing a terrible secret since the disappearance of the first boy, and is now locked in to a cycle of deceit, even though he knows the population don’t believe his explanations when another boy vanishes.

In to this mix we add Leonard, who as a teenager lives with the knowledge that he and his friends are candidates to disappear themselves. Leonard is a high achiever in a go-nowhere backwater, but he has a fascination with the chemical plant, retreating there to enjoy the solitude of the ruins. It is there that he gets involved with the gang of Jimmy van Doren, which leads him in to some seriously unpleasant situations. There’s also the enigmatic Moth Man, who as the only character from beyond the peninsula, assumes unique status in Leonard’s eyes and becomes Leonard’s special friend. Leonard’s first person narrative is extremely well realised, a pitch-perfect combination of naivety, cynicism and hope, and the inevitability that Leonard will be the next disappearee (which is made very clear on page one of the book) is tempered by the nature of the experience he undergoes and the gloomy situation he is disappearing from.

Glister is a remarkable book – in places social realism and grit, in places teenage angst; the almost complete isolation of the Innertown from the outside world is so implausible that it’s a stark counterpoint to the grimy daily lives of the inhabitants (it’s like a kind of grim post-industrial Truman Show where no-one knows it’s just a TV programme). It’s a crime novel, of sorts, and a horror too, though the horror comes more from the actions of ordinary humans than the supernatural elements, which have a strong taste of magical realism. Glister is then, a fusion of styles and genres, and it succeeds magnificently on those terms, proving that it doesn’t matter if a book is easy to categorise if it’s powerfully imagined and beautifully written. A haunting tale, not as depressing as you might expect, and highly recommended.

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