`At the exact moment of Luke's conception, his mother Avril saw stars." Thus opens Light in the Head , the first novel from young Irish writer Brian Langan, and having set the tone, he takes us through the story of the protagonist's birth and extraordinary life. Luke is no ordinary baby; he has a gift - he can "speak" through dazzling light and extraordinary colours which literally pour out of the top of his head. Understandably, Luke's gift causes havoc for his put-upon parents, Fran and Avril, and makes him an object of unwanted attention from the media and various religious zealots. As the story unfolds, we find out that other, more sinister characters have an interest in Luke and his powers - the shadowy Dark Man and an assortment of conmen - and along the way we see him dodge kidnap attempts, try to revive the dead, join the circus and perform more light shows than the aurora borealis.
This is an ambitious first novel, a bold foray into the territory of magic realism, but unfortunately one that doesn't get very far. One main problem is the language Langan uses to tell Luke's story: the plain-spoken tone, bland dialogue and use of colloquialisms can't carry the force of such a fantastical tale. Indeed, it's the symptom of a more fundamental flaw at the core of the novel: the repeated references to real place names, descriptions of many Dublin stock characters and the reliance on our familiarity with the above often seem to be at cross-purposes with the more magical thread of the story and end up bogging it down in the mundane and the predictable. In fact, Langan is at his best when describing Luke's light eruptions, displaying a vibrancy and imagination which were obviously present in the germ of the story.
There is also a slight problem with the book's premise: I found myself repeatedly asking why young Luke's powers mattered so much to the various people he encountered and remained unconvinced by the international media frenzies his outbursts provoked. Nevertheless, Langan has taken a brave step in choosing to tell such a fantastical, almost naive, tale in his first novel; it's just a pity it doesn't live up to its potential.