We never learn the characters’ true names. Creepy, who has earned the moniker by his loner behaviour, assigns ‘Maud’ to his neighbour, after the muse in Tennyson’s so-titled poem. In scenes reminiscent of American Beauty (1990), Creepy watches Maud through her adjacent bedroom window. This one-sided obsession gradually becomes a silent romance. While born out of mutual oddness, their relationship exposes how attraction can contain elements of madness.

Chapters switch between their first-person monologues, which are both eloquent and poetic. From the chilling imagery of the mother’s dog bites with ‘bruises around the puncture wounds spread dark and wide as a purple sunset’ to the grotesque description of a character’s lips that ‘stretch like custard skin’, what makes the novel so disturbing is how powerfully written it is. Scenes of domestic violence are frequent, yet Touchell’s use of black humour makes these themes more bearable. Characters’ observations of conflict and abuse are often hilarious, but also heartbreaking; they have adopted comedy as a coping mechanism for pain and trauma.

Unfolding as it does against the charged backdrop of feuds between parents and neighbours, this unsettling romance contains two enduring narratives of our culture – love and war – and for this reason most readers should find it engaging.