As Nick Hornby explains in the introduction, his small son, Danny, is autistic and attends a special school in London, for which there are limited places. To raise funds to create a few extra places in this school, Hornby asked 11 writers for an original story, and wrote one himself; £1 from every copy sold is donated to the school's trust. The stories are all monologues, and mostly written by Hornby's mates. And he has good writing mates. Among the contributors are Roddy Doyle, Zadie Smith, Irvine Welsh, Dave Eggers, Helen Fielding, Robert Harris, Melissa Banks, and Patrick Marber.
Marber is a playwright and most of the others are novelists, so it's an interesting and unusual opportunity to see how they fare at writing short stories. Most of the stories are lightweight entertainment, but fittingly, Hornby's own story, "Nipple-Jesus", about a security guard in an art gallery who becomes obsessed with the exhibit he's protecting, is the best read in the book.
