Greatly anticipated novel from the critically-acclaimed author of GIVING UP THE GHOST.
Alison is a medium. She really does hear voices from the other side. But what she hears is sometimes just too dark to pass on. She mostly tells her clients – drawn from the outer reaches of London skirted by the M25 – what they want to hear. Alison is ’a girl of unfeasible size, with plump creamy shoulders, rounded calves, thighs and hips that overflow her chair’. But put some make-up on her beige features and she glows.
Colette, her manager and side-kick, makes the bookings and gets Alison on stage. The two travel from one dreary hotel, and from one concrete civic building of the 1960s or 1970s, to another. Colette is something of a blank with flat hair. She too may be psychic. She thinks she may have spoken to her boyfriend’s dead mother on the telephone. Colette decides to work for Alison after Alison, at one of her stage shows, reveals to Colette who her real father is.
And then there is Morris, Alison’s foul-mouthed and obscene Spirit Guide. He appears to her one day and she is now stuck with him for life.
This hilarious black comedy is the work of a master writer at the height of her powers.
