My Legendary Girlfriend

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The way it's written and the way things are phrased really appeals to me, and it helps me in my own writing by allowing me to see how syntax and a turn of phrase can welcome one audience and alienate another. It made me think, "When will all this whining over a girl who doesn't deserve his 'great love' ever end?

It wasn’t just the music – as brilliant and indeed striking as it was, pulsating along on a wash of anachronistic keyboard sounds somewhere between the theme from a seventies ITV lunchtime children’s show and the theme from a seventies movie that children should not have been allowed anywhere near, hinting at and drawing you into a vision of the decade that was both gaudy and multicoloured and sleazy and desaturated at the same time and which probably never actually existed but felt like it had done only nobody wanted to admit to it. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the book, I still found the occasional part laugh out loud funny, I was still rooting for Will to sort his life out. U. (Gone, Gone) later in June, which very nearly had Babies as the b-side before everyone saw sense and realised it was too good to throw away so casually, even in the middle of the clamour of excitement about Suede’s debut single coming equipped with two b-sides that were better than most other bands’ a-sides. There’s Alice (who remembers his birthday), Simon (who doesn’t), Martina (the one-night stand), Kate (the previous tenant of his rented Archway fleapit) and of course Aggi - the inimitable Aggi.I was totally blown away by the end, I totally thought it was going one way until like 4 pages left it the book, then he totally flipped it on me. We both knew who Pulp were – if not exactly very much about them – as despite not having attracted a great deal of attention on its release the previous September, My Legendary Girlfriend had made Number Thirty One in the NME‘s Singles Of The Year for 1991, leading to a flurry of excitement amongst aspirant indie kids asking each other if anyone knew what this record with the brilliant title actually was.

He still makes lists of each birthday present Aggi ever gave him, has gymnastic fantasies about a perfect reunion night with her, dwells on the first words she uttered to him.

A hilarious, original story for anyone who has ever been dumped, dumped or lived in a dump - with the cross-over and bestselling appeal of BRIDGET JONES, HIGH FIDELITY and THIS LIFE. Ultimately My Legendary Girlfriend is pulp fiction for the Pulp generation, an old-fashioned morality tale dressed up as an enjoyable romp that should appeal to lovers of Men Behaving Badly and anyone who has suffered the ignominy of having a Sting song quoted at them to justify a break-up.

U. (Gone, Gone) as the encore, something that it is difficult to imagine happening only a matter of months later – and as we stepped out into the bracing spring air, drifting into the general direction of the train station, you stopped, smiled that gigantic smile and said “…something’s happening, isn’t it? This didn’t happen however and following a slight detour in his five-year plan he ended up as an agony uncle for teenage girls’ magazine Bliss before becoming Features Editor on the now much missed Just Seventeen. In another world, this would have been their first big hit, and in a sense it was, but approaching it now it stands out as both half-forgotten (it has been rarely played live since around 1993) and – yes – legendary. In some ways it is nice to read a male perspective when it comes to love although I don’t think many men would admit to ever behaving like a love sick teen like Will does through out. They also provided a lot of the book’s nostalgia, reminding me of when I would spend hours on the phone talking to friends or loved ones.

Helen Fielding and Nick Hornby are two names that will understandably haunt Mike Gayle, whose prescriptive hero has been dubbed the "male Bridget Jones", but Gayle's book probably owes more to early Martin Amis, soaked as it is in a fever of male self-pity redolent of The Rachel Papers or Success , though without the literary flourishes or darkness. I’ve been a huge fan of Mike Gayle’s books ever since reading All the Lonely People - yes, I know I was late to the party - so I couldn’t wait to finally read the book that started it all.