ISLAND PEOPLE PA (DALKEY)

A gay man flees the city for an island retreat,his sole companion his pet daschund and his sole,occupation keeping a journal and writing stories.,He invents a female alter ego named Beatrix, who,haunts him as does the ghost of a murderer who,occupied the house in the previous century, though,ultimately these hauntings are manifestations of,his own psychic disintegration. A mass murder near,the end of the novel brings the isolated narrator,into contact with his fellow islanders at last, in,a grisly ironic way.