Wild Abandon

The second novel by acclaimed author Joe Dunthorne arrives hot on the heels of the film adaptation of his debut Submarine and what a deliriously wonderful affair it is too.

Set on a commune in Wales, it follows a family on the brink of falling apart. Kate is seventeen and ready for the outside world, except she's only read about the outside world and much as she tries to fit into school, she's still an outsider hiding in plain sight. Her brother Albert resists change and resents his older sister pulling away. But he has a new obsession: the end of the world is coming, and he needs to be prepared for it.

Meanwhile their parents' marriage is failing, people are coming and going left right and centre and there is an uneasy sense of something ending, be it the world or the commune.

Dunthorne's new novel has echoes of Jonathan Coe about it, although comparisons seem unfair for a writer with a unique flair for warm, modern, post-modern comic timing that is endowed with earnestness as much as it is with bite and sarcasm. The book is brimming with laughs, chuckles and a deep sense of impending apocalypse.