In Southern Waters — Ian Marchant

Blackly comic novel which does for Brighton what WITHNAIL & I did for Camden Town

Caroline Woolfit, non-smoking vegetarian and wannabe new-age traveller, soon discovers that her new housemates at 23 Bloomsbury Place are a strange lot. There's Blossom, the writer manqué and betting-shop intellectual, Dave, the sexy sailor with a boat on the roof and Cats, who sniffs ladies' underwear. Not to mention Frances, the cultural studies lecturer.

As soon as Caroline puts her suitcase down they nick her stereo. From then on it is all downhill.