I haven’t really got along with Ned Beauman’s work to date. I read Boxer, Beetle and wasn’t particularly enamoured of it, which in turn has meant I’ve not felt inclined to pick up The Teleportation Accident. ‘Glow’, Beauman’s novel extract in Granta feels like a definite change of pace for the author: it chronicles an encounter in a Burmese bar and a subsequent love affair that will lead to its protagonist cooking up a new drug. There are some striking turns of phrase here, but I get the sense that Beauman is holding back a bit, so it’s tricky to judge what the full novel might be like.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.