Friction

Life in Manchester is sexy and stinking. Hold your breath. Justin wants a sex life, not a sex death. Rebecca has breasts but doesn't understand them. She needs to talk to Dostoevsky about erections, hairy armpits and firing squads. Life is difficult. Steve wants cash so he can enjoy his trendy body. He wants Carly too, but she just wants a never-ending orgasm. Johnny wants to be touched and, if possible, he'd like to seem happy. Colin wants to know why tits make his fists clench.

This is their story. They try their best. They drag their feet through the fashions, the foul, the famous and the drunk of twenty-first century Britain. They're looking for happiness. What they find is friction.

Review: Joe Stretch is such an original writer it's pointless to compare him to anyone, yet his black humour, sardonic tone and sheer readability suggest that Anthony Burgess is alive and well and still living in Manchester. This is A Clockwork Orange for the 21st century -- Nicholas Royle

Like Houellebecq for generation WHY * Ewan Morrison *

Raw, wild, aflame with ideas, Friction will bring a cure-or-kill medicinal shock to our post-boom hangover -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *

Transports the dystopian sexuality of Michel Houellebecq to the throbbing bars of Manchester, where a gaggle of characters numb their morality in pursuit of the ultimate orgasm. Satirically imagining a bleakly banal world of rampant consumerism and pregnancy as the final, putrid fetish, Friction snarls, spits and crackles like an anti Sex and the City or Kafka with cum-shots * ID magazine *

A sharp and intense world created by a radical new writer -- Xiaolu Guo