News Summary

• Saul Leslie’s novel A Working Title I Want to Change is his first novel.
• The narrator is living at the harsh extreme of the austerity program, the series of public funding cuts imposed by Conservative-led governments in the 2010s.
• Leslie creates the effect of an interesting conversation in the pub with someone who is thoughtful, politically alert, and ready with a story about the time his housemate walked in on him wanking.
• The story itself has a knockabout feel as it ponders the sofa's qualities (“the strained imprint of a hundred arses, or countless pairs of cheesy feet”)