The New Lad's luck has just run out. There had to be a limit to how long the unholy trinity of birds, booze and badinage could sneak past under our indulgent smiles, and in Kissing England, his second novel, Sean Thomas exposes New Lad's underbelly. And what a lager-bloated evil sight it is too.

Three schoolfriends are reaching their thirty-ish first life crisis. Alex is a consultant for the likes of Cosmo with an overactive omnipresent sex drive "always hanging around, embarrassing and crowding him, like a crap flatmate with no friends"--which explains why he spends his spare time getting his 18-year-old girlfriend to play Nude Homework. Landed Eddie is a pathetic heroin addict, scoring in the most sordid conditions. Tony is ostensibly the most settled, married to Eddie's beautiful sister Elizabeth with two adorable children, but he's racked by fears that Elizabeth is being unfaithful. Stylistically, Kissing England is powered by the friends' effortless repartee. At times relaying its characters' banal misogyny, the novel is by no means a seamlessly pleasant read, but it does provide a fluent, unflinching exploration of what it means to be a man today--and, through Alex's ponderings, the new national obsession, what it means to be an Englishman today.--Alan Stewart