The Wooden-Legged Elephant

Disillusioned by the indifference of the crumple-faced girl he adores and by the dismal decline of his beloved Everton, 10-year-old Michael McBride is increasingly sceptical about the credentials of the God that his terrifying schoolteachers and Catholic fundamentalist grandmother would have him pray to night and day and even on the toilet. Meanwhile, as the millennium draws to a close, the Creator himself is feeling the effects of age: his remote control is on the blink, he is drinking more than he should and, to the alarm of those around him, he has taken to plagiarising Shakespeare. Through the eyes of his fading but furious Maker, this irreverent three-part novel follows Michael from his childhood in the Merseyside of the 1970s, through the wild sexual escapades of his adolescence, to a final unholy showdown amid the olive groves of Puglia.