Byron Easy

Byron Easy, failed poet, failed philanderer, dropout and cuckold, shares little with his literary namesake. Estranged from his beautiful but volatile wife, his unreliable and semi-criminal friends and his unsavoury family, Byron finds his life at an impasse. As he travels from London to his mother's home city of Leeds on Christmas Eve 1999, he reconstructs the events that have led him to this moment through a fog of alcohol, nicotine, and regret.

Byron Easy is a well-realised novel narrated in the compelling voice of the eponymous hero, and it is testament to the strength of Cook's characterisation that this never feels claustrophobic or forced. The author is an able stylist and handles the complex vagaries of memory in a convincing and well-judged fashion. Yet though in many a respects a black comedy-and there are moments of genuine humour here-this is, however, an often unremittingly bleak tale. Byron's family history is one of violence, addiction, abuse, alcoholism and depression, and Cook is unflinching in confronting the reader with the seriousness of these issues. Moreover, though Byron is a funny and engagingly self-obsessed and self-deceiving narrator, he is often a rather unlikeable one, nor are his associates any more agreeable. Thus whilst this is ultimately the story of a redemption (of sorts), it is the misanthropic vision of 1990s London that will stay with the reader long after the book is shut.