Noughties

Debut novelist Ben Masters comes to us on a wave of expectation. Following the student protests of last year, we all want to know just who are these students of the noughties, filled with the passion of revolution in their hearts and the dancing feet of David Byrne in their retro loafers.

What he delivers answers no tangible questions about the state of a generation of youth, but does an admirable job of summing up the hedonism, the dawning of consequence and the impending fear of the future. Eliot describes his last night at university before returning home to wait out hitting the real world with a job and sorted life. However, over the course of the night, demons from his last three years: betrayals, love, old girlfriends, new flames, nights of passion all come back to haunt him in various memories and flashbacks.

What the book manages to do is make you laugh. It is very funny. It moves along at an even pace and keeps the laughs coming thick and fast. It does occasionally find itself losing focus in too many flashbacks and the author's own need to show how much he learnt in his English Literature degree, alluding to the literary ciriticism of Wordsworth and others, but ultimately, this is a charming book that sums up the pills, thrills and heartaches of university with charm and energy.