A hilarious, heart-breaking and decade-spanning portrait of a generation.
For a while, Ian, Lauren and Paul shared the same friends, the same university, the same dreams and the same potential. Ten years on they are worlds apart. Call centres, charity shops and bedrooms that smell like cabbage were never part of the plan. The real world doesn't look quite like any of them imagined. But when Lauren, in a moment of nostalgia, cracks open a long-forgotten Hotmail account, she comes face to face with the people these three friends used to be . . .
For two of them it will mean a new beginning to an old love story.
Hilarious and heart-breaking, In Real Life paints a searingly honest portrait of a generation and captures a world where human connection is easier than ever before but where relationships remain just as tricky.
Industry Reviews
Very funny and wonderfully charming. Chris Killen writes with an understated beauty about things like Tesco Meal Deals and the internet and hospitals and Babybels and the distance between people. In Real Life is a book about love and failed dreams that is full of truth and tenderness -- MATT HAIG, author of The Humans * Perfectly captur[es] the simultaneous sweetness and acute embarrassment of those old versions of ourselves that linger at the base of our inboxes -- Rosa Rankingee Guardian * Brilliantly insightful, funny, sad, brave and true - this book will make you laugh even in the face of your own (offline) mortality. Better yet, it will make you want to leave Facebook. Again -- EMMA JANE UNSWORTH, author of Animals * Horribly funny ... This curate's egg of a novel has some brilliantly bleak touches Daily Mail * In Real Life is brilliantly observed, deftly written, wonderful, sad, funny and totally real -- JOSIE LONG * Masterly, deeply felt and very funny ... Chris Killen writes "the contemporary" with a deftness, truth and unassuming poise that sets him apart and makes him important -- JOE STRETCH, author of The Adult * Chris Killen's second novel, In Real Life, is poignant, intricate, stimulating, and very funny. I wanted to stop around 30 times to show a friend a passage I'd just read. If forced to quickly describe In Real Life with names and percentages, I might say 86% Richard Yates, 14% David Lynch; or 100% Chris Killen -- TAO LIN, author of Taipei * In Real Life is one of my favourite books now. It perfectly captures the awkward sadness of tiny things. It deals with the shift in patterns of internet use over the past ten years in a way that feels far more real and relatable than I've ever read before -- BEN BROOKS, author of Grow Up and Lolito * A thoughtful comedy of manners which has some truly great moments ... Killen has great comic timing and an eye for the tragedy of little failures Bookmunch
