Fans of Jonathan Coe will love this extraordinary panoramic novel, which turns upon the whirligig of life that is Costford, a North Western town, in 1970. 'Richard Francis and Zadie Smith have much in common.' Alfred Hickling, Guardian 'An inspired attempt at reinventing that time-limned genre, the English provincial novel.' D.J.Taylor, Independent 'It is 1970 and Costford, a body-double for the place we would call Stockport, is a dreary smear of crazy-paving, rising damp and liver 'n' onions for tea. May, a middle-aged local magistrate with thick ankles and a dead husband, lives with her senile Mam. Trevor, her nemesis, could be May's son. He's a local councillor and the two initially clash over a development of tower blocks, but politics are soon forgotten in this beautifully wrought tragic-comedy as Trevor's marriage hits the rocks and he finds himself drawn to the ageing matriarch. Francis apes the tone of the times with consummate skill in a brilliant slab of realism that still finds a place for verbs like "firkling".' Arena