Super Host: the charming, compulsively readable novel of life, love and loneliness

Being lost in a place you know by heart is one of life''s most disconcerting feelings

Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize nominated artist who was a Bright Young Thing. Now, aged 55, his wife has left him, the reviews have dried up, and his gallery wants to stop selling his paintings, saying they''ll have more value retrospectively...when he''s dead. So, left with a large West London home and no income, he moves into his painting studio in the back garden and rents out the house, soon reaching status as a Super Host on AirBed.

At last, the money is coming in, but he''s loveless and, well, lonely. Turns out his house guests are as quirky, lost and entertaining as Bennett himself, unwittingly unlocking the parts of Bennett''s life that have been forgotten to him for too long, but can they help him feel less lost in the place he knows best?

Wry, rueful and rich in observation, SUPER HOST provides a delicious portrait of middle-age, marriage, and the underlying fears and loneliness that colour so many lives.