John's second collection consolidates his reputation as one of the most unusual and intelligent imaginations now at work, and will build on the astonishing success of Panoramic Lounge-Bar, winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. It's a mature book, with more lyricism and allusion than PLB, but no less witty for it; powerful, moving and sometimes disturbing, it's a journey through a labyrinth of memory, history and strange anecdote, written in Stammers's trademark style -- literary yet hip and immediate, with a real steetwise vibe, often English in its forms but transatlantic in its voice, and never less than wholly rivetting.