The Shoe — Gordon Legge

Gordon Legge's debut novel follows three days in Archie's life where arguments about football and the relative merits of his record collection loom large. The focus is on Archie and his group of friends: Davie, the Mental Kid, Richard, and Dostoyevsky, the intelligent, fun-loving, vegan Doberman. And all this has a soundtrack - whether it's Prince: makes God look like a prototype, classic Motown, Joy Division or Van Morrison: 'awesome'.
The Shoe, set somewhere between Edinburgh and Glasgow, draws the reader in to a special culture with its own codes and languages centred around music, football, sex and the camaraderie of street and pub.