Chris is a passionate advocate for mental health awareness and was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 40. My understanding of it is that it is about a son experiencing guilt followed closely by depression, after losing his parents, because he realises that he never really knew them.

And I've always used both of them in different but complementary ways to manage my mental health – to manage challenges that I have with anxiety, all of which is linked to being autistic, which is not something I knew about until a year or two ago. Usually when a novel is set in remote mountains such as the Highlands the backdrop is a key part of the story. To me, there just was no point to reliving that experience, without any pay-off or new insight to be gained. The nature of the writing as much a part of the chaotic atmosphere as the depiction of the Scottish Highlands within. A truly unique book, like nothing I’ve ever read before … a thoughtful and beautifully written story, which is simultaneously gripping.Equally, if on any given day, I'm struggling or my anxiety is sparking or I'm just feeling grey and depressed and overwhelmed for whatever reason, then 10 or 20 minutes of running will not fix it, but it will make it better. This is helpful, otherwise it would sometimes be difficult to know who was writing what, for the narrator himself, with a history of poor mental health, is also – understandably – confused, disturbed, at a loss. There are interesting reflections on man’s interaction and alienation from the natural world, alienation from self and others. There was something there about the physicality of running, things working, that was a really important way for me of discussing one mental health challenge. Chris was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 40 and is a passionate advocate for mental health awareness.

In short: a bleak, disjointed “wandering” of text, that has a single message and “feeling” to convey.

In reality, the experience is often very much like the one I had with actual marmite: I hate it, and now understand why others do to.

I’m trying not to get caught on the breathlessness of a suggestion, the agitation and excitement of that single page, that tiny clue that may mean nothing.

He records times and weather conditions precisely, then describes experiments whose purpose is unclear. That being said, I believe some specific resonant moments will stick with me, even if the overall arc of the story didn't quite deliver. Fray can be seen as an active process of working through its narrator’s deep feelings – and there’s cause to wonder how much of what’s narrated is happening in the external world, and how much in the narrator’s mind.