An audio book.
The ever-present first-person narrator, Rilke, 43, works for an auction house in Glasgow. At the start he's agreeing to clear a big house in a week for an old sister whose brother has died. He finds an extensive, valuable porn book collection. He also finds old photos, some of them snuff photos. Are they rigged? He has various contacts who he asks. He's gay, cruises, and knows cross-dressers, porn traders, drug-traders etc. He also knows about the legitimate art market. He's friends with a leading policeman who's secretly gay. We learn about the tricks of the auctioneer's trade. There is a plot and a final surprise, but it's Rilke's voice which carries the novel. I liked it.
Other reviews
- Paul Magrs (We get a lovingly detailed and grimy catalogue of impedimenta. The book is full of stuff: erotic ivory netsukes hidden in jacket pockets; worn stone steps in tenement buildings; shirts with armpit stains like weak tea. It is this kind of concreteness and eye for detail that makes The Cutting Room a literary novel - pulling us closer to life than most generic efforts. It's less successful when it gets self-consciously literary and chimes off Girodias or Foucault, or presents its tombstone chapter epigraphs to lend some clout.)
- Linda Wilson
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