A novel courtesy of Alasdair for my birthday last year (the pile of books is not to be underestimated), bought in hopes of providing a counterbalance to the numerous not very good novels about stand-up comedy that I’ve read over the last few years. These other novels’ issues have ranged from mawkishness to inaccuracy beyond credulity, but all of them suffer from feeling utterly un-lived in and incredibly unfunny. They were written by authors who were not stand-ups, and it showed. So a relief, then, to find that Running The Light is by far the closest in terms of versimilitude. The protagonist - Billy Ray Schafer, a washed up comic surviving on the road - actually sounds like a stand-up when the routines are depicted. The little details all add up. Norm Macdonald is even a character for a couple of chapters. Taking place over a somewhat disastrous week, it captures the downward spiral of a man already down on his luck, with a Stanhopeish cynicism and depravity, which only occasionally wears, but is otherwise engrossing. I just have to hope this is never me.