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British / American literature – Published 2025

This is a book that needs to be read through the prism of its author’s life. It is the story of a middle-aged man named Sean who works in an Echo Park bookstore and is struggling to write a novel. Tottenham himself, a British expat, works in a bookshop on Sunset Boulevard; a middle-aged man who wrote a novel about a middle-aged man who works in a bookstore.

Such books are usually given the label of ‘autofiction’, old guys / girls telling stories about how great their lives could have been, based on how they actually were. Tottenham’s book goes in the opposite direction, an extensive and remarkable background reduced into squalor, ‘loser lit’ as others have accurately called it. The contrast between Sean and the city he lives in, LA with its obsession with fame, couldn’t be more stark.

Tottenham’s writing benefits from his ability to observe, and is at its best when describing the dreadful customers that roam his store; as well as the many digressions into the lives of his friends, rightly or wrongly, part of the creative classes.

This is the opposite to a novel that promises that everything will be alright in the end. It’s about what happens if you keep to a routine long after it has failed you and proved to be of no worth; in that respect it is very much of our time.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5