Touching Strangers

Madden (Poison Shy) offers a rousing, weird, and darkly comic tale with a beating pulp fiction heart. Virtually seeping bodily fluids, it evokes films such as David Cronenberg’s Rabid and Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, in which dense urban populations become fertile disease incubators and hell really is other people. The novel begins in a low-rent Toronto apartment building that houses motley renters in close quarters. Aaron and Samantha, a couple since adolescence, share a germ phobia that has resulted in an anxious existence defined by manic hygiene and self-diagnosis. When wildlife start dying, followed by the couple’s neighbors, they and their already unhinged relationship spin out of control. Toronto is soon in crisis; the “buzzard flu” is quick-acting and deadly. Madden’s story remains close to the couple, but its scope steadily widens to include a drug dealer, his dealer, the second dealer’s brother, a sex worker, her clients, and other viral hosts. Using short, film-style jump cuts, Madden expertly covers his expanding cast and their territory, from dirty alleys and retail shops to hospital wards. He offers intriguing thoughts on intimacies, the human need for and fear of them, and their sometimes steep price. He dwells on “the unsettling bizarreness of the situation,” but the story has an appealing B-movie merit: sometimes gory, sometimes crude, sometimes funny, sometimes violent, and altogether engrossing. (Apr.)