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Overtaken

On sale

26th April 2004

Price: £9.99

Selected:  Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780340767696

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Kelvin is a 33-year-old property developer living in a small Lancashire town.

He has five close friends, all in well-paid jobs. Having bought their lovely houses cheaply in the early 1990s, they are free to spend money on their own pleasures – particularly clothes, meals and cars. Most of all, their life revolves around going to see things – art exhibitions, comedians, live music, plays…

When we first meet the six friends they are on their way to see a new kind of circus. Once there Kelvin does something unforgivable to a clown, has a strange snack and meets the most beautiful girl he has ever seen.

It’s the beginning of the end of the good life.

Reviews

Gary Morecambe, <i>Daily Mirror</i>
The purpose of this book is to entertain and it does exactly that. By the last paragraph, I was wondering exactly how long I'd have to wait for Alexei Sayle's new novel.
<i>Spectator</i>
Compelling and believable characters...pacy and brusque
<i>Daily Telegraph</I>
Darkly humourous...[an] eccentric, bleak and wonderfully self-assured novel.
<i>Independent</i>
Like a psychopathic ringmaster in a circus, Sayle ushers in his cast of characters...He makes them perform their surreal little dance, about vengeance, and guilt, and the casual brutality of life, and then, with a shrug, he feeds them to the lions.