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A rediscovered literary classic, The Bloater is a rollicking hothouse novel where love and repulsion are two paths to the same abyss Why do the only men I know carry wet umbrellas and say �Umm?� I�m being starved alive. Quick: the first bookshop for a copy of the Kama-Sutra. Min works at the BBC as a sound engineer, and in theory she�s married, but her husband George is so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off even when he�s still in the room. Luckily, she has her friends and lovers to distract her: in Min�s self-lacerating, bracingly opinionated voice, life boils down to sex appeal�and of late she�s being courted by an internationally renowned opera singer whom she refers to as The Bloater (a swelled, salted herring). Disgusted by and attracted to him in equal measure, her dilemma�which reaches a hysterical, hilarious pitch�is whether to sleep with him or not. Rosemary Tonks�the salt and pepper of the earth�is a writer who gets her claws into the reader with all the joy of a cat and a mouse. Vain and materialistic, tender and savage, narrated in brilliant, sparkling prose, The Bloater is the perfect snapshot of London in the 1960s.