The man who fell to York

PICKING out Harland Miller in the Theatre Royal caf is easy. His slim frame is bent almost double over a thumbed paperback of The English Patient. Dressed in Oxfam chic - grey suit jacket, T-shirt, jeans and sandals - he seems at home and displaced all at once. Just like the narrator of his debut novel Slow Down Arthur, Stick To Thirty, in fact.

The book is due out in paperback next week. It has been acclaimed in varied quarters: "deliciously evocative" said The Times; "best of the Y2K bunch" said Big Issue; "right up my strasse" said Miller's mate, Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker.

And it could be about to do for York what Trainspotting did for Edinburgh: give an ancient city some street cred. DNA Films, whose co-founders' credits include Trainspotting, Notting Hill and The Beach, are turning the book into a film, with a screenplay by the writer of East Is East.

Slow Down Arthur is set in the early Eighties. Vienna by Ultravox is on the radio. The Yorkshire Ripper is on the loose. The pits are on a sudden decline.

In York, 17-year-old Kid Glover is struggling to find an adult identity through glam fashion and New Wave music. He idolises Ziggy Hero, who describes himself as a David Bowie "interpreter" rather than impersonator (the book's title is taken from Bowie's film The Man Who Fell To Earth). Hero is loosely based on a real Bowie interpreter, Michael Warren.

In the book, these androgynous men in make-up are not embraced by 1980s York, even if gender-bending is all the rage. Violence is never far from the surface. Kid Glover leaves a small northern city for a large southern one: the more tolerant, more indifferent London.

Miller's York is both recognisable and strange. All through the book he calls it by the Roman name, Eboracum. Its elements are always slightly askew: so the old Grob And Ducat pub on Rougier Street becomes the Traveller's Rest; the William Etty statue outside the Art Gallery becomes George Leeman; the Evening Press, quoted liberally by Glover's father, becomes the Evening Echo.

This parallel universe is partly created by an imperfect memory - Miller has lived in London for years, although he visits regularly. And it is partly intentional.

"It's a kind of ghost story," he explains. "There were three levels. The historic level of York and the actual, physical level we all know. And then there was another level, the ethereal, slightly spiritual level.

"It's a meditation on York as much as anything."

Slow Down Arthur is firmly anchored to his own experiences of growing up in the city. He was born in Naburn but spent most of his childhood in Woodthorpe.

Like Kid Glover, Miller was into music - he became a punk at the age of 12. And both narrator and author made money printing T-shirts and badges, in the latter's case at Priestley's in Bootham.

Miller became an artist before turning to writing. His talent was nurtured at home and at school, Ashfield Secondary Modern (he failed his 11-plus).

"My dad was a water colourist. When I got to school, I got taken under the wing of Miss Bunn. She used to have me into her room to do 'Keep Our School Tidy' posters. I saw the potential of being an artist. I got preferential treatment, missing other lessons to do these posters."

When he finished school he went to do a General Certificate In Art at York Tech. "It wasn't what I imagined art school to be about. I was doing things like typography skills."

The realisation that York could not offer what he wanted led him to seek it elsewhere. Chelsea Art School proved far more fulfilling, and his art career was born. He became friends with controversial artist Tracy Emin, and is part of the BritArt movement.

Today his figurative paintings are shown in leading London galleries. He also has many American admirers. In 1989, he moved to New York where he revelled in wearing a "I NY" T-shirt, with an asterisked footnote revealing the NY stood for North Yorkshire. Many Americans couldn't place his accent and assumed he was Australian.

After an exciting two years, he rushed back to London thinking he had testicular cancer. It was a groin strain. His anxiety was fuelled by another artist getting the disease: old-style oil paints are carcinogenic. They have been banned now, although there is a thriving black market in Cadmium Orange.

Miller has also worked in Paris and Berlin, where he moonlighted as a male escort.

"I was doing it because I was absolutely broke," he said. "It was a good way of going out and eating and earning some money as well." After the pudding course, he would make his excuses and leave.

These experiences will all be turned into highly entertaining fiction, if he keeps up the form of Slow Down Arthur, Stick To Thirty.

The book developed from a journal he wrote to cope with family trauma. His dad, a former Rowntree's worker, has a degenerative disease of the brain, similar to Alzheimer's.

"I felt large chunks of my childhood were disappearing with his memory, things I couldn't ask about. I started to keep very detailed diaries for myself, missing out nothing.

"I developed the style of writing in which the diary moved back into the past."

Slow Down Arthur is written with that same anecdotal riff. It evinces both the pain and hilarity of faltering adulthood with a sure touch. And it fondly recalls a time when people struggled desperately to look fashionable, a struggle the understatedly stylish Miller will never forget.

"I remember one bloke making a pair of spats out of some cornflake packets.

"He painted them white with emulsion because he wanted to look like Anthony Blanche out of Brideshead Revisited. It was raining by the end of the night. The white paint ran off his shoes.

"It just looked a sight."

Slow Down Arthur, Stick To Thirty is published by Fourth Estate on July 12, price £6.99