Engines Beneath Us, by Malcolm Devlin (paperback)
 
Rob is a Crescent kid. Born and raised in the sheltered circle of grey semis, built to house the employees of The City Works and their families. Under the eye of the reclusive Mr Olhouser, the residents of The Crescent go about their work, their lessons and their law, accompanied by the never-ending sound of The Works machinery deep under the ground.
 
When Lee Wrexler moves into The Crescent, he brings with him something dangerous from the outside. Not just a reputation for trouble, but an outside perspective that will show Rob that the home he always thought he had a measure of is a stranger and far more unsettling place than he could have imagined...
 
Malcolm Devlin's Engines Beneath Us is a powerful and unsettling novella of how the individual spirit is crushed by the pressure to conform, from a contemporary master of weird fiction.