Clear

<p>On 5th September 2003 New York illusionist David Blaine gets into a small Perspex box next to the River Thames and begins starving himself. 44 days later he comes out again four stone lighter. This much is clear.</p> <p>Yet the huge crowds which gather to sneer and worship and get drunk and throw eggs seem to have very different ideas about what – if anything – this macabre spectacle might mean. For some it’s a religious experience. For others it’s the perfect excuse for a post-pub punch-up.</p> <p>For Adair Graham MacKenny – a 28-year-old fashion victim whose uber-cool landlord is giving him an inferiority complex – the human zoo which surrounds Blaine is simply a great place to pick up girls. Until an exquisitely shod woman with a plastic bag full of Tupperware calls him a pimp…And Nicola Barker’s riotous peep-show of a novel opens out into a hilarious and thought-provoking portrait of a world of illusion delusion celebrity and hunger.</p>