This Is It - Joseph Connolly

Eric Pizer can just about keep his two lives going: weekends in the country with his wife, Bunty, getting sympathy he doesn't deserve; Mondays to Fridays in London with his pretend job, a house full of misfit tenants, and a girlfriend with secrets of her own. But when one sunny morning Eric is hit by a bus and breaks his leg, this on top of the threatening phone calls from a man called Slingsby, Eric suspects that things are about to become very complicated indeed. Joseph Connolly's novel is a tour through the disintegrating world of inveterate liar and accident-prone Eric. Along the way we meet a cast of hilarious characters: the wild and angry Fiona, always bumping in to things; Henry Vole, one of the tenants, addicted to tea, Hobnobs - addicted to Fiona; a couple of decorators who seem to be systematically demolishing Eric's house; and of course the blackmailer Slingsby (Eric thinks he knew the Krays). Once again, in This Is It, Joseph Connolly shows that he is the country's most original writer of black comedy.