This is a stunning debut that successfully treats the alternative American rock scene of the 90s. The latest in Dennis Cooper’s groundbreaking Little House on the Bowery series. Set in the mythological land of Dayton, Ohio, Artificial Light is part historical novel, part science fiction, part sociological study, part murder mystery. In 1994, a young woman named Fiat Lux donates 21 notebooks full of her writings to a university library and then disappears. It’s only later that her close relationship with a well known rock musician who has recently committed suicide is discovered and the notebook’s contents become the subject of growing fascination, conjecture and gossip. Intending to satisfy the public’s insatiable curiosity about the rock star and throw light on the author’s rumoured involvement in his now infamous death and, more importantly, hoping to make a case for her remarkable writings as a work of literature, the university’s press decides to publish her notebooks in a single volume under the title she has given them, Artificial Light .