User, by Bruce Benderson (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)

Weird, strung out, superbly written, Bruce Benderson's study of New York street culture ventures to the darkest corners of its neon lit milieu only to whirl around and shed occasional blinding shafts of light on its cast of crazed characters. The central of these is Apollo, a beautiful black male prostitute whose brain flickers in and out of awareness as the illegal substances ebb and flow he shares the task of unreliable narration with, among others, a transvestite and a would be gay detective in a text which is not so much stream of consciousness as stream of unconsciousness. Be warned. It's raw, it's erotic, it's depressing in the extreme but it's brilliant.