Wankers

Wankers follows six months in the life of Sooty Stevens, music journalist and self-described “professional wanker”, navigating his way through a world of drugs, booze and Bond films. Sooty’s search for something better and higher in life takes him through a gallery of grotesques: his on-off girlfriend Jennifer, who finds Sooty alternately infuriating and endearing; his tolerant sister Angie; his flamboyant best friend Dougal; rich would-be eccentric Bastian; Bastian’s inscrutable wife Consolata; Sooty’s kind mentor Martin; bullying editor Donahue; and passive-aggressive DJ Tony Benson. Funny, sexually frank, and intermittently touching, the novel presents a portrait of a certain type of 21st-century extended adolescence, and its consequences.