The fit - Philip Hensher

From the author of The Mulberry Empire comes a short, delicious, rather disorienting novel about an indexer who wakes up one morning to a Dear John letter informing him his wife has left him.

'My wife had gone and I didn't know where she had gone. It would have been terrible if I had liked her but I only loved her.'

John is an indexer, and a bloody good one at that. He lives in a beautiful house with a beautiful garden, and has a beautiful wife, Janet. (Yes, yes, they are called Janet and John. They know.)

But lately, things have begun to go wrong. Thanks to his flawless index for 'Haddock: The Story of the Fish Which Changed the World', John has become typecast, and a commission for an index for 'Squid Through the Ages in Poetry and Prose' swiftly followed. And to cap it all, he's woken up with a terrible case of the hiccups, and Janet has left him.

Wonderfully funny and light, but ultimately very moving, The Fit is English comic writing at its best, from one of the most talented young novelists at work today.