Author(s): Christine Brooke-Rose; Brian McHale (Introduction by)

Literary Fiction

Next is a murder mystery. It is also a harrowing chronicle. Christine Brooke-Rose creates the language, and through that language the world, of the London homeless. It is a world of dispossession, and those who live within it make it habitable as best they can.

Next is written -- like all of Brooke-Rose's novels --in free direct speech', a tellerless tale which contains only what hits the consciousness of a character, whether thought or speech. The tale passes from character to character without a break, only the consciousness and inflection indicating the transitions. The homeless seem to many of us an anonymous mass, until we get to know them from within.