Married Alive [Paperback]

Nicole Miller--née Nicola Sharp ("by art school I thought it was common; too late I caught on that an English working-class name is a whole lot cooler than a French tart's name, which can never be cool though it can be camp."--is romantically attached to her working- class roots, sexually attached (although reluctantly) to her largely absent, irritating and unfaithful photographer husband, and adores her granny.

So, when her mum calls to say she's putting granny Liza Sharp into a home, Nicole--recovering slowly from a Bolly and cocaine-fuelled girls-night-in-leaps onto the first Bristol-bound train to rescue Liza from this fate worse than death and brings granny to live in her ultra-90s Docklands loft.

It's hard for Liza--who has "a beard, three fine warts from which mustard and cress appear to be sprouting and smells like a dish-washing machine that has been left to bear its steaming bounty for a good three weeks of along hot summer" and who used to help her grandchildren play truant and encourage them to shoplift humbugs for her--to adjust to London life. But, paradoxically, it's easier for her than it is for Nicole, who, having successfully metamorphosed into an arty middle-class hedonist, is feeling almost as comfortable and at-home as Gregor Samsa did after turning into a giant beetle in The Metamorphosis. Almost.

Although the plot is pretty thin, there are some terrific fight scenes, plenty of top-notch sulking and lots of Burchill's characteristically idiosyncratic and surprisingly thought-provoking observations. --Lisa Gee

Nicole has met and married the man of her dreams, but marriage hasn't yet put an end to her fun-loving, hard-drinking, independent life. Life is sorted in their "oh-so-cool" Docklands flat until Nicole decides to rescue her beloved Gran from a fate worse than death: incarceration in a home.

Born in Bristol in 1959, Julie Burchill is known for her controversial and acerbic style of journalism. At seventeen, she went to work for the New Musical Express, at nineteen The Face, at twenty-four The Sunday Times. She has written for many magazines and national newspapers and is the author of eight previous books.