Caret

'Pilcrow is a humdinger, a startling work that stands out against the monotonous field of contemporary British fiction as a genuine, almost miraculous oddity. [.] A 500-page novel about a boy who can't get out of bed might seem like a nightmare but for a master of comic observation like Mars-Jones it is a gift.' Metro 'Mars-Jones' scrupulous, compound eye enables him to see an entire era . . . He can describe more or less anything and make it interesting.' London Review of Books Plenty can be daunting, but in the spirit of compromise this feast of a novel is served on a succession of small plates, each portion providing an adult's daily intake of literary nourishment in episodes that are variously sweet and sour. For starters there's the time John spends living out of his beloved Mini in 1970s Cambridge, before settling into a life of qualified independence. The whole banquet is accompanied by lashings of John's ideas about the Lady Godiva of militant twelfth-century Hindu poetry, about the eroticism of fine glassware, the omnipresence of the number 108 and the undeclared war between wheelchairs and carpet tiles. Caret is a long book but not a heavy one, its prose triple-whipped to guarantee a light and creamy texture. Reading it is guaranteed to help you work, rest and play.