The other is more conceptual, or at least metaphorical. A new kind of language, derived from drug experiences, assures us that from this moment on nothing will be the same. The success of Boxy an Star is to convince us that the future starts here. The language King has developed for his novel is unsettlingly juvenile, evoking both the innocence of first love and the perils of love affairs conducted entirely through drugs like Ecstasy. King takes up themes developed in other chemical generation novels, such as Irving Welsh's Ecstasy, Geoff Dyer's Paris Trance and, even, Alan Hollinghurst's The Spell namely that the nature of romance has changed in the 90s.
Emotions are heightened, passion is more immediate, and the come-down is more destructive.
Boxy an Star is the most successful of these three novels because it is entirely prelapsarian, at least for the lovers Bole and Star. They are too young and too stoned to appreciate the dangers that is left for the reader. He speculated that this is because they don't wish to be seen as merely 20th-century novelists. As a result, many of the novels published this year are distinctly odd and with novels, odd is often good. I predict that 1999 will be seen as a vintage year for fiction.