Mystery book

[Lovely Me]

I'm posting this on behalf of someone else on another site.  (Basically because I feel guilty for initially giving him a facetious answer!)  This is his description of a novel he read about 7 or 8 years ago and he can't remember the title or author. 

"The main character is a man and throughout the story many of the people he comes into contact with die. As a young man he lives with his sister - they are lovers - on a boat called the Ozymandias. Sister gives birth to a baby girl but then hangs herself. The daughter is blind. Father & daughter live on the boat together. When he gives her a pet kitten she drowns it. But she has a pet raven. The girl dies when she is a teenager. One or two deaths later, the man is living as an old man in a badly flooded area on the coast. He makes friends with a young girl who visits him. They kill a windsurfer and feed his body to their dogs. When the man discovers the girl is in fact a boy he tries to kill him - but the boy kills him. Novel is set in Britain."

Ring any bells with anyone?

[LeMarchand]

Doesn't ring any bells directly, but the subject matter sounds like early Ian McEwan. I've not read any, so wouldn't like to guarantee that it's him - might be woth investigating, though.

[Lovely Me]

Thank LeMarchand - will give it a try! :o)

[Golem]

Has elements of The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks about it.

[Lovely Me]

Yeah, thanks Golem.  It was on the Iain Banks Web site that the question was first posed because the guy thought it had similarities with IB and thought one of us might have read it.  :o)