A proper lads' book. It restored my faith in novels written by poets. I spent a while thinking the little green man was Yoda. ( )

Strange group of friends with dares who get to be the owner of the little green man, motivations can only be guessed at, well written and complex modern tale ( )

An interesting book which I wasn't sure about from the start as I thought it may have been more of a 'boy's' book. However I quickly got into it. Basically Barney gets his old school friends together for a few games of football and dares; as in the old days. This time though the little green man is worth substantial sums of money rather than just the pride of winning a dare.

It's difficult to review this book without giving too much away (namely the end third!). The characters are great - they are just your average kids whom are now adults. It shows how their lives have changed (not always for the better) and I liked the representation of Barney's autistic son. The plot itself is simple but with some outstanding twists.

Having enjoyed reading and teaching Armitage's poetry I enjoyed delving between the covers of his prose. It is the same writing style, which I was pleased with and the reference to childhood sweets memories as a coping mechanism was unique.

A pleasurable and relatively quick read for me, this will have a different meaning the next time I read it. Although I'm passing on the book to others I'm sure it'll come back round to me at some point. The ending for me (unlike some other reviewers) was not disappointing, I felt it actually concluded the novel in a very satisfactory way. Plenty of morals, plenty of sub-plots and plenty of fantastically written narrative ( )

Uncorrected proof copy