Barry Callaghan

This is the story of 29-year-old Albie Starbach, a reclusive man who is the caretaker of a large rooming house, with a day job as a crossing guard. He is a caring man. But he is also a dangerous man... living in a world that to him is threatening because he feels he has been wronged, and he is resentful. He has wired the rooming house with dynamite, and every time he goes out, he sets a timer. He had better get back in time or the house will blow. Often, it is not easy to get back; out on the streets desperado cowboys in the trees talk to him, "working women" taunt him, the police accost him. His only companion is his legless mother who, in a wheelchair in their basement rooms, conducts day-long derisive arguments with the television, as if all those people were alive in her room. Living together at the bottom of their world, mother and son feed each other their rage, their righteous indignation, their sense of moral singularity. Determinedly alone, determinedly wounded, they are embattled, and their story is very much a story of our time, and the world had better watch out because this caretaker is prepared to take everyone with him.

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