WITH the theme of the stalker - terrified woman in large Victorian house with only faithful cat to keep her company, friends and police dubious, Christmas coming, snow falling gently and gently falling, ketchup-like blood all over the work room, villain so evil he steals Van Morrison tapes - Sarah Dunant has written a supercharged, knuckle-in-the-mouth, heart- stopping roller-coaster of a book that teeters on the edge of camp melodrama, that is hip - remember, hip is only around the corner from the bum - with it, and just a hint pornographic.
Turning the genre on its head, however, she jettisons the rescuing male and has her heroine gird up her loins and, like Xena the Warrior Princess, go, breast-works and all, into battle.
Elizabeth Skvorecky is a translator from Czech into English who lives alone after breaking up with Tom, her boyfriend of seven years. The romance had been going rapidly downhill, mainly, it seems, because of their diverging tastes in music - he likes classical, she the aforementioned Van the Man, among others.
When one of the Belfast warbler's tapes goes missing, Lizzie suspects Tom, who still has a key to the house. She doesn't suspect Millie the cat, who remains her friend. She gets the key back, but odd occurrences continue: the breakfast table is mysteriously set for two, all her tapes are moved and arranged into a leaning tower, the ketchup is splattered over her computer.
A stolid policeman answers her call for help, but cannot provide it. Then a female vicar suggests that maybe an exorcism might prove effective. Finally the lad himself appears at the end of Lizzie's bed one morning at four, brandishing a hammer and hyper-ventilating fit to bust a gut. And what does our heroine do? Well, it would rather spoil the story if I were to tell.
The whole tone of this book is hothouse-sweaty, the menace of the real stalker being complemented by the content of the novel Skvorecky is translating, a thriller about an American detective who is seconded to Prague in order to break up a drugs gang. We are given copious segments, most of them of a misogynistic nature, with the policeman's Czech wife being abused, maimed and tortured, and generally mucked about.
Stepping outside her role of translator, Lizzie begins to insert pieces of her own into the novel, giving a helping hand to the fictional heroine in ascending ratio to the lack of aid she herself gets - or doesn't get, as the case may be. Taking her stance from this, she begins her own fight back, setting out to stalk the stalker, as it were.He stays a rather anonymous figure. Could he be the Holloway Hammer, who is responsible for a number of attacks on young women in the neighbourhood? Then again, is he so taken up with our Lizzie that he has no time to go preying on other unfortunate females? We are told that he is tall and thin, has frayed underwear and snaggle teeth. Other than that he remains the stereotypical baddie with the Jack Nicholson grimace and mad grin.
In the end, it is hard to know what to make of the book. Is Transgressions a serious effort to analyse the psyche of a threatened woman who decides to fight back? Most certainly it is. But is all the controversial, and gratuitous, sex and violence necessary? By today's standards, probably. In another time and place, innuendo might have sufficed, but to be effective nowadays, everything must hang out.
Perhaps the central intention of the novel is best encapsulated in an exchange between Lizzie and her cat early on, when she advises the tomcat- menaced feline, "Come on, girl. It's your garden. Don't let some man get the upper hand."
