This Book Will Save Your Life By AM Homes Granta Books, Euro11.80, 384pp

A STICKER on the front of a book that says it's been shortlisted by a celebrity book club is hardly much of an endorsement. Since when did TV and radio personalities start reading their own books?

Normally they get a flunky to do it for them and give them notes.

Perhaps that's why they are so proud to recommend a book - because they've finally read one.

This book, though it does have a Richard and Judy sticker, also features the six most succulent looking donuts I have ever seen.

You wouldn't know whether to take a bite or open it.

The protagonist is an unlikely hero, Richard Novak. Later on in the novel he wonders at his dullsounding name, "Richard Nathan Novak, a big nobody. Richard Nathan Nobody - he plummets into a depression."

Depression features big in the novel, both in human form and in the shape of a hole that has developed outside Novak's home and continues to grow until it threatens to swallow a horse. He notices the hole after he has awoken from a month of solitude, ending in what he thought was a heart attack or a stroke but was actually a panic attack.

Although the book is completely focused on this one character it holds interest and great pace throughout. Novak is an incredibly wealthy selfemployed stock trader who has left his wife and boy, Ben, whom he hasn't spoken to in years. He has no friends and no life outside his home and work. On paper he comes across as an asshole.

However, as he branches out making friends, first with a crying housewife in the grocery store and then a range of other interesting characters, it becomes apparent that he is more than he seems.

Homes navigates his kindness and generosity without getting schmaltzy. Equally, she deals with his self-hatred and inwardlooking obsession whilst keeping his character sympathetic and even appealing.

The crucible of the novel occurs after Novak has performed several other good deeds. He is driving down the freeway when he notices that an SOS message is being tapped out by the brake lights of the car in front. He responds by tapping out the same message with his car horn, which elicits the same response from the lights of the car in front. Novak becomes convinced there is someone in the trunk of the car. A high-speed chase and bump ensues.

This is the point at which you think our hero has finally gone completely demented.

Novak pushes this other car off the road. Both end up crashing down a hill. The driver gets out and starts to run but Novak catches him and several other people stop to help.

Only when the man is being held down does Novak check the trunk of the car. It contains a naked woman who the driver, a TV repairman, had snatched out of her shower that morning.

Although this makes him a national hero for a day or two, Novak is still full of self-hatred.

As the book wends on it is clear that he hasn't got over his ex-wife and he has terrible guilt over missing his son grow up. When his son comes to visit him things get even worse for a while. Then they start to improve.

It speaks to a dissolute society where family break-up is the norm and individual lives become abstracted from every day contact. It is beautiful, swift and ironic. One of those pleasurable books that leaves your intelligence feeling flattered and yet still holding something back to wonder about.