High Fidelity - Couverture souple

Is it possible to share your life with someone whose record collection is incompatible with your own? Can people have terrible taste and still be worth knowing? Do songs about broken hearts and misery and loneliness mess up your life if consumed in excess? For Rob Fleming, thirty-five years old, a pop addict and owner of a failing record shop, these are the sort of questions that need an answer, and soon. His girlfriend has just left him. Can he really go on living in a poky flat surrounded by vinyl and CDs or should he get a real home, a real family and a real job? Perhaps most difficult of all, will he ever be able to stop thinking about life in terms of the All Time Top Five bands, books, films, songs - even now that he's been dumped again, the top five break-ups? Memorable, sad and very, very funny, this is the truest book you will ever read about the things that really matter.

If this book was a record, we would be calling it an instant classic. Because that is what it is (Guardian )

It will give enormous pleasure at the same time as expanding, in a small but worthwhile way, the range of English literature (Independent on Sunday )

Leaves you believing not only in the redemptive power of music but above all the redemptive power of love. Funny and wise, sweet and true (Independent )

A triumphant first novel. True to life, very funny, and moving (Financial Times )

Very funny and extremely cleverly observed (Mail on Sunday )

Funny and compulsive (GQ )