Home Truths, by David Lodge (Penguin, £5.99 in UK)

Will David Lodge never go away? He seems to have written innumerable (well, actually, 10) novels about immensely unpleasant people doing immensely unpleasant things to each other: and unless you're a Lodge fanatic, or a masochist, or trapped in a lift somewhere, it's hard to see why you'd want to plunge into yet another action-replay expose of the ghastliness of the cappuccino-drinking classes. This mercifully short novella, adapted from his highly successful stage play about a vicious journalist who shafts a has-been novelist (yes, honestly), struggles to stay abreast of the zeitgeist by tossing in references to Ralph Lauren and "a new British film about male strippers in Sheffield". Which is, frankly, pathetic. Nice work? Not exactly.