Diet Croydon

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Diet Croydon is a novel set in the suburbs of South East London, at some point in the late 1990s. As such, it's perhaps now quite dated; it comes from a time before Internet 1.0, when mobile phones were the exception for most people rather than the rule. It's set around eight years before Facebook existed, when Yahoo was a decent search engine and you might have had an email address if you were some sort of geek.  If you can't bear the thought of life without Twitter, it might not be for you.

At the same time, one can question whether romantic comedies ever go out of style; the fashion may change, but the story remains the same: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets job in kebab shop and spends his time arguing about Kirkegaard with his boss while a psychotic ex-boxer tries to kill him.

If that doesn't persuade you, here's a review from Amazon:

Follow Steve through a fog of amnesia and bus exhaust fumes, under a pigeon infested railway bridge, and up a steep and narrow winding hill to the plateaux of grime that is Bromley. With an unfathomable past and an uncertain future Steve stumbles through this charmless suburb with nothing to hang on to but a rusty biscuit tin full of cash, a philosophical paperback and a mild case of the horn. Life in Bromley should be simple, but for Steve it seems to be anything but.

This is an unusual and charming novel that will appeal to anyone who has ever felt lost. Despite the grim setting and existential theme, Diet Croydon is remarkably funny as well as being quick and easy to read. James Foreman has a cerebral sense of humour and a taste for the absurd; what makes this novel tick is the way he folds them into the kind of down-to-earth setting we can all recognise. If you don't know Bromley, you know somewhere like it. Croydon, perhaps.


Order your copy of Diet Croydon here, or if you're in the US, here.

After you've done that, get in contact and I'll give you some FREE STICKERS.  Isn't that nice of me?