Life After God

These days, it's almost a relief to find a book I can pick up and just get lost in. I can't do 'proper novels' anymore – I opened 'Birds Without Wings' on the train home one holiday, salted with promise... and had to put all 800 pages back in my rucksack about 5 minutes later. Couldn't get past the first page. The main thing I learnt from studying English Literature at University is that most books are boring.

So when I opened this book in the Oxfam on Sidney Street, Cambridge, it was like sinking into a ball of baking bread. Short paragraphs at the centre of each page, with a little line drawing above. Space. Details. Thoughts. Life.

Probably the reason I love this book is it feels like I could have written it. It takes a lot of things I feel and puts them in words. "It's all about m.e.". Sure. Why do you like reading the things you do?

I just looked out the window and thought, 'I'm doing a terrible job of selling this book.' It doesn't help me if you do go and read it, but I wanted to write this because I think it might help you, and that would actually make me happy. Funny to catch yourself in the act of altruism.

So here's my pitch: this book is about what most people around you between the ages of 18 and 35 are thinking and feeling about life. It's a bunch of little stories that don't go anywhere, except down into their speakers' souls. It's people prodding around this space inside that school and telly never told them about, but seems about to eat them whole whenever they're driving somewhere alone, or last thing at night as they arrive at home. It's realising we've got to find out what life is for or we'll never get started. It's daring to speak out loud again the name of 'God', and listen how it sounds.

If you think like this, you probably already feel you need to read this book. And if you never think like this, you need to read this book to get what everyone else is thinking. Happy travels.