Friction

Joe Stretch is such an original writer it's pointless to compare him to anyone, yet his black humour, sardonic tone and sheer readability suggest thatAnthony Burgess is alive and well and still living in Manchester. This is A Clockwork Orange for the 21st century -- Nicholas Royle
Like Houellebecq for generation WHY * Ewan Morrison *
Raw, wild, aflame with ideas, Friction will bring a cure-or-kill medicinal shock to our post-boom hangover -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *
Transports the dystopian sexuality of Michel Houellebecq to the throbbing bars of Manchester, where a gaggle of characters numb their morality in pursuit of the ultimate orgasm. Satirically imagining a bleakly banal world of rampant consumerism and pregnancy as the final, putrid fetish,Friction snarls, spits and crackles like an anti Sex and the City or Kafka with cum-shots * ID magazine *
A sharp and intense world created by a radical new writer -- Xiaolu Guo
Vicious, funny and disturbingly honest, Friction is a fine debut from an assured new writer * New Statesman *
Clever, savvy, licentious and macabrely funny with it * Manchester Evening News *
A caustic comedy, and doesn't mark the arrival of a new provocateur but of a promising satirist * Independent on Sunday *
Joe Stretch takes no prisoners with this debut, presenting a distorted reflection of 21st century Britain that'sas black as it is bracing... Friction succeeds as a highly charged vision of modern society's moral decline - it's a novel that may well achieve the cult status it's striving for * Metro *
Frictionis a bellow of rage and disgust at the eagerness with which the 21st century soul attenuates itself. That this trivia-obsessed, pornography-fraught and digitised-to-death world that we have made for ourselves can produce such high art, and with such slicing satirical humour, is one of the central paradoxes, and causes for celebration, of our age -- Niall Griffiths