Sweets for Strangers

British novelist Corrigan (Tommy Was Here) writes elegantly of sexual ambivalence, rootless messed-up youth and family dysfunction. Cambridge dropout Daniel Marriner cuts himself off from his strict, oppressive parents and spends almost three years in France drifting through an underworld of drugs, drink and casual sex. Returning to England to start a new life, he moves in with his sister, Rachel, and her husband in a town on the Thames and enjoys rural domesticity. The idyll is shattered when Daniel's Parisian friend, reckless, handsome Luc Braillon, a seducer of young boys, suddenly appears and takes a job at the hotel where Daniel works. Their friendship is charged with homoerotic overtones, which simultaneously excite and repel Daniel. When Rachel's adolescent son Guy, a truculent kleptomaniac, is kidnapped, Daniel vanishes without a trace. These events are linked to a plot to force Daniel's return to France, masterminded by Carlos, a procurer of boys on the Riviera who had virtually enslaved Daniel for a year. Corrigan's unsettling portrait of a conflicted youth weaves contemporary variations on the theme of the prodigal son's return.