Nothing Lasting

Nothing Lasting is the tale of a nice normal middle class pyromaniac. Egged on by his bossy mother he is under pressure from her ghost to make the family name by lighting fires up and down an unspecified country, where all the place names are taken from a map of Antarctica, and thus enter history. The narrator's father is a hopeless electrician who lives through long periods of unemployment. His mother, when alive, was in and out of psychiatric hospitals. The narrator is disturbed in his mind and lights fires in what he imagines to be acts of revenge for the times he feels he has been wronged by others in his life. The novel contains strong elements of surrealism and is a black comedy.