Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kirsten Arnett:

Cherry is a Floridian, scraping a living as a clown and paying the rent with a dead end job.  The best entertainer on the circuit is Margot The Magician.  Can Cherry fall in love, make a living and reconcile with her Mum?

Well, I’m gonna leave you to find out.  It’s the kind of novel that in less-talented hands could be a disaster.  The outrageous nature of the plot is always there and there’s the make-up of dark jokes.  In between that, it flits between being a workplace comedy (all Cherry’s co-workers have side hustles), a book about art versus commerce, imposter syndrome, the impending fubar of a right-wing America and queer relationships.

It also strikes me as being an incredibly erotic, comedic book.  It opens with Cheryl ‘entertaining’ a bored mum at a kids party (Mum has a clown fetish) and we have some great sex scenes - especially Cherry and Margot’s first encounter portrayed as the stages of a magic act.  

This is balloon of a book that is dark, funny and ties itself off in a sweet bow.  It’s published by Little Brown on 18th March and I thank them for a preview copy.  #stopmeifyouveheardthisone.  

 Slags by Emma Jayne Unsworth:

Sarah hires a camper van for her sister Juilette’s birthday.  Juliette is a mother, married to a decent, yet dull bloke.  Sarah limps from hook up to hook up.  The great love of her life was her English teacher, Mr Keavney. As the sisters head to Scotland by Hymer, the story switches between this and what happened in the Summer of Sarah’s last year in school.  

I’ve been a fan of Unsworth’s writing for a long time - Animals was adapted as a film and didn’t quite capture the wabisabi of the book.  This is a genuine treat. It’s funny, Rabelasian and Wildean by turns.  It’s dead on in the way sister relates to sister.  And, by turns men and boys relate to women.  

It’s also brilliant on the ascending boho that was late 90’s Manchester.  She’s also brave enough to stitch a fictional thread to this, the boy band 4Princes.  What happens to Sarah is a genuine shock (and not the one you’re thinking of).  When the novel takes a dark, sharp turn she’s still in control of a book that is sweet, sour, touching and horrifying all at the same time. 

It’s published by Harper Collins on May 8th May, 2025 and I thank them for a preview copy.  #slags

 When The Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi:

Overnight, The Moon turns into cheese.  NASA declares it to be an ‘organic compound’, the Chinese government says it’s actually bean curd.  The Vatican declares a miracle.  And so, an outrageous chain of events is set in motion… with a cast including a dimwitted US President (not that one) an egocentric billionaire (see also), a pensioners lunch club, a set of disenchanted church goers, bored astronauts and greedy bankers. 

Ok, minor criticism first: often this feels like a loosely connected series of vignettes, with the connecting cheese being the President, the Astronauts who can’t actually go to The Moon and the Musky billionaire. Who is not him, but just as awful in different ways.  Plus, the final part of the novel literally retcons the original and outrageous concept.  

But for the vast majority of it, it’s laugh out loud funny and the kind of silently, screaming satire that Armando Iaunnucci would love.  Among my favourites: the warring cheese shop owners (with the two rival staff members who fall in love) and the sex scandal involving an ambitious congressman. Put it this way, you’ll never look at Brie the same way again.  Late on in the novel, as things become apocalyptic (described as ‘Fromageddon’ or ‘The Lactopalypse’) we have the aforementioned bankers offering people high limits credit cards and the young fantasy writer who will never see her novel published.  

Scalzi considers this as the final in a trilogy that started with ‘The Kaiju Preservation Society’ and he’s now writing space opera again.  I’d urge him to reconsider - this succeeds as a sweet, nutty treat in two difficult genres - funny SF and an epistolary novel.  It’s published by Tor on March 27th, 2025 and I thank them for a preview cheese, sorry copy.  #whenthemoonhitsyoureye.  

 Murder On Line One by Jeremy Vine:

This is technically Vine’s second novel and even on Socratic terms, it’s pushing the envelope.  Edward Temming was the host of a lunchtime phone in, in Sidmouth Devon till a family tragedy intervenes.  Made redundant by his employer, Edward discovers a plot.  

Well, I can’t really say anymore as it may ruin your enjoyment.  Vine is an English eccentric and it’s a truly bizarre wedge of prose; with a surreal line in simile and metaphor. See also: the  characterisations of women in this novel (which vary between traitorous/menopausal/libidinous) and a character later in the novel which I would consider to be transphobic. 

Linking the narrative is a random chain of objects and events.  These include variously: a catfishing scam, antique automata, a Scooby Gang of angry pensioners, an old episode of Columbo, the early Hitchcock ‘Rebecca’ and a computer hard drive filled with acid.  No, I’m not making this up.  

And although it is nice to see a real place (I should, know, my wife lived there) it is too overworked as a gimmick.  Put it this way: if you don’t like it you can use it as SatNav to find your way round the South West. Sidmouth, a place where nothing happens on a daily basis is portrayed as a cross between 1930’s Chicago and millennial Baltimore.  

It’s at least fifty pages too long and an editor should have ended the book in Sidmouth Costa.  A series is planned.  Less snark, more logic and sharper editing may improve it. It’s published by Harper Collins on April 25th, 2025 and I thank them for a preview copy.  

The Lion Who Never Roared by Matt Tiller: 

For those who don’t know, Jack Leslie was the first black player to play for England.  The star of a barnstorming 1925 Plymouth Argyle team, the call up rescinded when the selectors discovered his skin colour. 

The author was one of the campaigners which has led to a statue of Jack outside Home Park (plus, him becoming the first England player to get a posthumous cap).  It’s a lucid portrait of a man, playing in a 2-3-5(!), a character who loved his wife (who was in, turn racially abused for marrying a black man).  

It’s also good on the bizarre nature of 1920’s football, with Argyle playing Exeter City on BOTH Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, with Jack’s career ending with a scratched cornea from the lace of a football.  

It’s also good on the casual nature of racism then (in newspaper reports) and it’s more virulent nature now.  Ultimately, this is a portrait of a hero who ended up being the bootman for West Ham.  To quote Harry Redknapp, ‘turns out we should have been cleaning his boots’.  

 Shroud by Adrian Tchikovsky:

In the far flung future, humanity lives among the stars and exploits any planet it comes into contact with.  On the moon of Shroud, a survey team comes into contact with a primitive society, but one with  the capacity to learn.  When they become stranded, will peace or science win the day?

Well, neither actually. Hard SF fans will lap this up quicker than a second-hand copy of New Scientist, but it’s not dynamic enough to sustain attention.  The writing is heavily factual.  And, yes I’ll admit that is a trope of the genre.  But despite the odd flourish (humanity is genetically engineered for deep space) the crew are the hard-boiled narks that have inhabited SF since the Nostromo in 1979.

The plot picks up a little in the middle eight of the book, but this is what Whovians will know as ‘base under siege’.  The prose style here is choppy, episodic and resolved far too quickly.  The alien race (worm-like, using endoskeletons and sacrificing the injured to their god) is a fascinating concept, but they are seen first as bloodthirsty Lovecraftian beasties and then noble angels at the ends of the novel.  

It’ll have its fans, but it found it too cold and worthy to keep my interest.  It’s published by Pan Macmillan on February 27th, 2025 and I thank them for a copy.  #shroud