Sam Tallent

'A thrilling, nauseating and painfully real depiction of what happens as youth, talent and charisma sour' - MEGAN NOLAN 'Anyone wondering where The Great American Novel went: this is it on bail' - DBC PIERRE Debauched, divorced and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across...

Robert Beaujolais forfeited the last years of his youth to the Marines, watching his friends die. Beaujolais survived, but civilian life made him regret it. Compared to the truth of war, peace fit him like a casket. At least he was in love, even if he was the only one who could admit it. They were together—until they weren't. Then,...

THE BEST NOVEL I'VE EVER READ ABOUT COMEDY Megan Nolan GLORIOUSLY DEPRAVED Geoff Dyer LIT UP MY PLEASURE CENTRES AND LEFT ME STUNNED Rob Doyle Billy Ray Schafer stepped off the plane in Amarillo, Texas, with twenty-six hundred dollars tucked down the leg of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boot. He walked to baggage claim slowly, jelly-legged and nearing lucidity, coming...