Just finished...

Got given 'Steal you away' By Niccolo Ammaniti (who also wrote the fabulous 'I'm not scared')

This is essentially a book about loosers. People who can't sort out their lives or control its direction at all. One of the things I love about it, is like films such as Magnolia, it is made up of a series of different stories, so doesn't really have a main character. The common link is the small village that they live in, or pass through. It works brilliantly, with some great segues as characters pass through (i.e. in a car, on a rainy night). Also it's a story about children and their parents (who often appear in different threads). This helps to highlight the inability of anyone to help themselves, an the tendency for children to be as screwed up as their parents. This is really a fantastic book, read it as soon as you can.