This Age We're Living In

Description

Funny, affecting and life-affirming novel for everyone who has ever felt that sometimes life really is pants... 'Only two big facts are known for certain- you are on a large spinning rock hurtling through space at about 67,000 mph, and one day your body is going to die. Will a new pair of shoes really help?' Worth's 12th Rule of Shopping George Worth is a grumpy lifestyle columnist who works in a woman's world. He hates fashion, mobile phones, computers and Young People. At night he goes home to a borrowed Labrador and feelings of guilt about his dead wife. Justin Smith is a Young Person. A bright newcomer, he's always on his mobile to his girlfriend, surfing the Net and keeping abreast of the latest trends. Then comes the day when Justin's girlfriend throws him out and he finds himself having to share a flat with George. As the women around them watch and wonder both men start to work out what really matters among the obsessions and distractions of modern life. Laugh-out-loud funny, moving and revealing, This Age We're Living In is a novel that confronts the big questions- Can shopping solve everything? Why are boxers better than Y-fronts? Are lifestyle writers secretly in the same mess as everyone else? And if life is a journey, who the hell changed all the signposts?

David Wilson has travelled much of the world but it's mostly in Britain that he feels a bit lost. For more than twenty-five years he's been a journalist on national newspapers, mainly the Daily Mail and The Times. He has also written for the New Statesman and Tribune and is an occasional talking head on BBC2 and Channel 4. He is a member of honour in the NUJ. Born in Liverpool, raised in Cheshire and Machester, apprenticed as a reporter in Sheffield, he did not go to Oxbridge, has never written a sitcom and nor has he slept with anyone famous. He lives in London and is a dad. This is his first novel.

A smashing book. It's so rare to find a writer who makes you chuckle and think, and who can strike a balance between laughter and integrity...David Wilson has done it brilliantly and touchingly -- MAVIS CHEEK Warm-hearted, suspenseful, entertaining * THE TIMES * Witty, perceptive, observant, provocative, wise; funny but never played just for laughs; the best book I've read this year -- TOM HOLT Amusing, poignant, challenging...it is more than just a comic read, no ordinary passing-of age novel and certainly not a male menopause rant... In truth, it probably deserves to be in a class of its own * SUNDAY EXPRESS * Tragic, funny, sensitive, raging against the modern world, and proof that an ordinary middle-aged bloke really does have feelings -- MICHELLE HANSON