Description

Following the success of his 2019 memoir Jim Bob From Carter – In the Shadow of my Former Self, Cherry Red Books are delighted to publish A Godawful Small Affair, the fifth novel from the former Carter USM frontman. Described as “Stranger Things comes to Brixton”, the novel (written under the author’s given name, J.B. Morrison) also includes a companion piece: Harvey King Unboxes His Family. Consider them a double A-side single of fiction.

First, ‘A GODAWFUL SMALL AFFAIR’ finds fifteen-year old Zoe Love missing without trace. While the police search the Earth for her, Zoe’s ten-year-old brother Nathan has other ideas. A year earlier, when Zoe was abducted by aliens, no one believed her. Apart from Nathan. He realises the aliens must have taken his sister again. As his father grows more and more desperate, and with his home planet in Brixton in danger of dying, Nathan decides he must get himself abducted by the same aliens, find his sister and bring her back. What unfolds is a heart-warming, heart-breaking and utterly compelling story of family love and loss, outer space, inner cities and David Bowie.

Elsewhere, ‘HARVEY KING UNBOXES HIS FAMILY’….. The eponymous shelf-stacker and video unboxer joins a genealogy website and starts compiling a family tree. The website sends him an email – a distant cousin wants to share her version of the King family tree. It’s a lot more detailed than Harvey’s attempt. The main difference is that on Harvey’s family tree his father has been dead for twenty-six years, while on his cousin’s he was still alive until four months ago…. A discovery that unearths further family surprises, secrets and lies. Like an insane episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

THE AUTHOR SAYS: “When I first considered putting these two novels together, I didn’t immediately think they had much in common. Then I realised they were both stories about young boys experiencing life-changing events, and started to find other similarities between the two main characters. They both grew up in one parent families, and both share a love of science fiction, for instance. Perhaps bringing the two tales, and the two boys, together made more sense than I’d first realised…”