ALBERT ANGELO (MME) – B S JOHNSON-TOBY LITT

With an introduction by the writer Toby Litt. The eponymous Albert is an architect by training but a supply teacher out of necessity. Feeling that he is failing at both, and haunted by a failed love affair, he begins to question what he wants to achieve. Using a number of original narrative techniques Johnson attempts to reproduce life (and its travails) as closely as possible through fiction, while at the same time revelling in the impossibility of such a task. A passionate advocate for the avant-garde, B S Johnson said of the acerbically comic and exuberant Albert Angelo that it was where he really discovered what he should be doing . And on page 163 of this extraordinary book is one of the most surprising lines in English fiction. But you should start at the beginning.