Tim Lott's first novel, White City Blue, came out in 1999. The narrator, Frankie Blue, is a West London estate agent. His best friends are Tony, Nodge and Colin. Diamond Tony - formally, Anthony Diamonte - is a flash Italian hairdresser: handsome, charming, apparently successful, he has a flair for cruelty. Nodge - or Noj, Jon backwards - is an overweight cab driver with intellectual pretensions. Colin - just Colin - is a computer nerd with bad skin who still lives with his (ill, possessive) mother. They're all QPR fans; all more or less thirty. Every year, without fail, the four of them celebrate 14 August, the anniversary of a perfect (in their collective memory, anyway) day they spent together in 1984, 'halfway through the last summer we were together at school'. But in 1998 there is a problem, in the shape of Frankie's fiancée, Veronica Tree, who will turn thirty on 14 August. Oh dear.

LRB 7 February 2002 | PDF Download