Reversed Forecast - Tapa blanda

'An imaginative lowlife tale, told with acuteness and verve.' Literary Review. 'Barker's characters are an eccentric bunch of urban misfits! They are playful, idiosyncratic creations and Barker manipulates them with gleeful fascination! A strange and wonderful novel.' Sunday Times 'modern and refreshing' Sussex Life 'Spry, crisp and dry, understatedly hip and with a gentle, most peculiar sense of humour running through it, it's one well worth looking out for.' Jenny Turner, The Scotsman 'There's not a single middle-class character, not a French restaurant, merchant bank nor art history department anywhere in this metropolitan novel. It's concerned instead with the London of Ruby the bookie's cashier, utter nutter Vincent, Samantha the would-be cabaret singer, asthmatic Sylvia and Little Buttercup the failed greyhound. Barker is a superbly physical writer, and the rough material of her characters' lives is vividly realis ed. There is a fair quotient of quiet desperation, but also plenty of wit and spiritual toughness and it is all completely believable. A first novel which has you ready to queue for the second.' Independent on Sunday 'The brilliance of Barker's style is beyond question! She is, I am very much afraid, too good for the Booker Prize.' Spectator' 'Nicola Barker has a rare writing talent.' Time Out 'The diversity of Barker's imagination is stunning; her language, witty and exact.' Daily Telegraph 'Nicola Barker paints the big picture on a small canvas, capturing in it the universality that is the essence of good writing.' The Times 'An excellent writer!. Her vision is unique, funny, dark, cute, sarcastic, and clever.' Literary Review

The prize-winning first novel from England's greatest female comic novelist. 'Barker is adept at manipulating complicated groups of characters, knitting their lives together adroitly and watching them interconnect.' Jonathan Coe, Daily Mail A reversed forecast is a hedged bet which is still a long shot. Reversed Forecast is a novel of gambling and allergies, music and dogs, set in some of London's less scenic locations. Its characters select each other and try or don't try to make winning combinations. But, as Ruby, this story's soft-centred heroine, observes: 'Losing, that's the whole point of the gamble.'