Books: When Nick met Bridget on the beach...

A Week in Books: A few dead horses you may see flogged in bookshops soon

FUELLED BY the glad tidings of Nick Hornby's two-million transfer deal, wannabe novelists will this week be sitting down all over Britain (or Brighton and Crouch End, at least), eager to make good all those resolutions about committing their inspiration to print. Now, I speak from the receiving end of the 4,000-odd new works of fiction issued in Britain every year, and my best advice remains, as ever: Don't do it.

If you must, then try at least to shun the shopworn formulae that currently litter the trend-seeking brains of agents and publishers like so many yellowing cracker mottoes. In newspapers, faddish ideas turn into fish- wrap within the week (thank heavens). In books, they can hang around for years. So this is the kind of thing I especially want to avoid during 1999 (and, alas, far beyond):

This Life Goes On (and on...)

A hip, hot, yet curiously cool tale of neurotic middle-class house-sharers coming to terms with their sexual confusions, Law Society exams and that mouldy package in the back of the fridge. Thrill to the flat, featureless dialogue of a book stuffed with randy but deadly dull trainee conveyancers just like its readers (and its author), who'd all rather be watching TV anyway. That's life?

The Fulham Broad Way

In which the ditsy Junior Fashion-Shoot Assistant at Frocks! magazine somehow resides in Mandelsonian splendour in SW6. There she wavers between the charms of a coke-addled Soho film producer and a Hooray who owns a Wiltshire rectory stocked with damp labradors. Posh brand names, frilly underwear, designer drugs and that old Biological Clock, ticking all the way from Titanic to the Met Bar.

Dad's the Comedian

Hornby-gauge Bloke grows up, sires a sprog or two, gets in touch with his feelings and mooches wryly around the DIY superstore of a Saturday afternoon in between serious talks with the Sensible Partner. Lots of stuff about old records, old girlfriends and Facing Up to the Challenge of Baby Poo, preferably written by a half-forgotten stand-up with a hefty therapy bill whom some out-of-touch publisher imagines is still famous.

Growing up Tropical

Amid the oleanders, jacarandas, salamanders, etc, of the spoilt paradise of Tristan da Cunha, the serpent of adolescent sexuality traps our nubile young heroine in its coils. Nature throbs and oozes in sympathy as she falls for a slinky young rebel and so brings the cruel forces of masculine, imperial authority (PC Plodvana) crashing down on the doomed young couple. (Author registered with major model agency.)

Grammar-school Hooligan

A riot of Stanley knives, Doc Martens, Ben Shermans and two-tone sounds down at Scunthorpe United during the Winter of Discontent (or was it the Falklands War?) Emetic boot-on-bone action joins acne-age angst and political allegory in this bleak tale of teen mayhem by a very nice boy who was doing his A-levels and Oxbridge entry at the time, actually.

Countdown to Catastrophe

Y2K! CIA! TWA! RIP! Jumbos fall from the sky! Mainframes shut down! Checkouts refuse your switchcard! Can our greying but still virile retired agent thwart the info-terrorists and stop Millennium meltdown? And can a sozzled old hack who has run right through his redundo cheque get Harrison Ford on board and carry on making those alimony payments?