ONLY FORWARD - Softcover

Excellent reviews:

‘A major work indeed’
Today

‘Smith delivers that rarest of commodities: a genuinely new twist with a punchline of Crying Game proportions’
Time Out

‘No one writes better than Smith about love ... No one writes better about being wasted ... Nigh-on unique.’ i-D

‘A storytelling skill that can only be described as pure genius’
Venue

"Extraordinary debut" Clive Barker

Michael Marshall Smith’s surreal, groundbreaking, and award-winning debut which resonates with wild humour interlaced with dark recollections of an emotional minefield.

Stark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings – a neighbourhood where spangly purple trousers are admired by the walls of buildings as you pass them. Close by is Sound, where you mustn’t make any, apart from one designated hour a day when you can scream your lungs raw. Then there’s Red – get off at Fuck Station Zero if you want to see a tactical nuclear battle recreated as a sales demonstration.

Stark has friends in Red, which is just as well because Something is about to happen. And when a Something happens it’s no good chanting ‘Duck and cover’ while cowering in a corner, because a Something is always from the past, Stark’s past, and it won’t go away until you face it full on.