Out of the Line of Fire

Mark Henshaw's 1988 debut is a brainy postmodern puzzle: a narrator picks apart the memoir of Wolfi, a German philosophy student, testing its reliability layer by layer against references to Calvino, Camus, and Wittgenstein. The epistemological structure is inventive enough to earn its Miles Franklin Award shortlisting, and readers who enjoy metafiction in the European tradition will find it intellectually rewarding. That said, parents and faith-minded readers should know clearly what is here: explicit sexual content involving a minor, a character's erotic obsession with his sister, and criminal acts targeting gay men. The book is cold by design and contains no redemptive arc. It belongs in a specific adult literary niche, and that audience alone should seek it out.