Review of Alphabet published in Time Out (UK); 9/1/2004; by Roz Kavenay

Alphabet by Kathy, Page Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
 
Sometimes novelists go too far - and sometimes they manage to demonstrate that too far is the place they needed to go. When we first come across Simon, the manipulative killer whose damaged consciousness is the centre of Kathy Page's  novel Alphabet, he is serving life for a killing whose details we only learn gradually.

What Page manages to make us see is that all murders are endings, an end to the potential of the sweet-natured young woman who was prepared to take a chance on Simon, and to the possibility that she might have healed him.  Simon's selfish capacity for rage was a betrayal of her, and the people around her.

Page is not in the business of making excuses - Simon's hard-luck backstory doesn't begin to let him off the hook. Yet Page finds the possibility of rehabilitation fascinating; this is a book about someone coming to accept that dealing with his crime is not just as get-out-of jail-free card, but part of a human duty he never before knew he had.

This is not a romanticised book - for a long time, Simon is simultaneously engaged in grooming possible future victims, including his therapists. Even at the end, its far from certain that he has changed. The well-observed stinks and scams of prison life, the sloppy idealism and burned out cynicism of the professionals who work with Simon - all of these ensure that this is not just a thought-experiment in case history, but a book which lets us see the humanity and vulnerability which accompany monstrous acts.