There's No ‘F’ In Wonderful

Synopsis

A disillusioned, drug-soaked intellectual is escaping ‘The Heat’ – both literal and metaphorical – by relocating to a new town in the North. What follows is a surreal immersion into the region’s club culture, where fevered dancing, shadowy relationships, and the rituals of nightlife blur the boundaries between reality and delirium. Employment as a croupier leads to encounters with a cast of eccentric figures, none more vivid than Christine – a ‘Superstar Croupier’ whose fierce individuality, joy and pain mark her as the radiant centre of the novel.

Set in Leeds during the height of the Northern Soul explosion in the seventies, There’s No ‘F’ in Wonderful is at once hilariously funny and deeply unsettling, exploring the magical yet disorienting passage between adolescence and adulthood—a time when anything seems possible, even as the world insists otherwise.

Broady has long written for those who remain irrepressibly young in heart and spirit. With There’s No ‘F’ in Wonderful, he delivers a strange, glorious celebration of resilience, joy, and defiant living. Or as the book itself insists: Live! Live! Live!

Praise for This Book

‘Bill Broady's voice is unique in British fiction. His new novel, There's No ‘F’ In Wonderful, continues a high-serious comic tradition that is now otherwise close to extinction.’ —David Rose

‘Here the human drama in the uncertain days just after Punk is brought to life in an X-rated screwball comedy set in a Northern casino – told with Broady’s unique gift for extravagant but just-right simile, for twisted romance, and for unexpected pathos.’ —Richard Price

‘Bill Broady’s There’s No ‘F’ in Wonderful vividly resurrects an all but vanished world of smoky casinos and Northern Soul discos, bringing to life a ribald, unique suite of oddball characters who stay in one’s mind long after the novel is finished. Shot through with tenderness and humour, Broady’s ability to evoke time and place – 1970s Yorkshire – with sublime melancholia and brio at once is unparalleled.’ —Jean McNeil

‘A novel of rhythm and hope, set in a Leeds instantly recognisable to anyone who experienced it, Broady works with broad Northern humour, neatly shot through with brains, all held together with writing that’s subtle, sometimes beautiful, sometimes raw, to create an unforgettable story.’ —Chris Nickson

‘There’s No ‘F’ in Wonderful is a pulsating and dreamlike literary romp. Viscerally hilarious and riven with electric prose, Bill Broady has written another truly memorable novel.’ —Richard Owain Roberts

‘A rambunctious, laugh-out-loud royal flush of a novel. The rocking, cheap suits, Cinzano and furs world of 70s Leeds clubland that Bill Broady depicts with such characterful detail and cinematic relish may no longer exist, but it will live on forever through the pages of this hilarious, joint-jumping, rug-cutting read.’ —Piers Torday

Praise for Previous Work

‘Broady choreographs his imagery and themes with dexterity and verve … and infuses this book with an unusual kind of grace.’ —Time Out

‘Broady writes with rude, comic dynamism.’ —Financial Times

‘Echoing the aspirations of its heroine, Broady’s stunning narrative seems to hover in its own distinctive element and, at times, to soar and fly. In prose of poetic precision and poignancy, he touches on the deepest dreams of the human heart.’ —Observer

‘With fizzy dialogue and a buoyant sense of humour, the story unfolds crisply – and if Broady doesn’t have much room for manoeuvre, he uses the historical novelist’s trick of portraying sex lives to make his memorable character live on the page.’ —Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail

‘Broady brings tubfulls of humour, drama and fizzing exuberance to the ILP leaders’ zigzag journey from mill, market-place, pub and chapel to council-chamber, parliament and cabinet room. He takes ideas seriously but he makes those ideas dance. And he treats the historical record with scrupulous care while letting imagination take wing where the sources stop.’ —Boyd Tonkin, UnHerd

‘The Night-Soil Men is an electric piece of writing, deft and funny and occasionally obscene. As an evocation of the left’s long struggle between radicalism and electability, it is perfectly timed to the current moment – which is impressive, given that Broady spent a decade writing it. No novel this year will give a better background to the dichotomy of power and principle that is at the heart of our new Labour government.’ —Will Dunn, New Statesman

‘The Night-Soil Men is a moving portrayal, in a series of vignettes whose dates are helpfully supplied in the chapter headings, of friendship, comradeship – not without hostilities, rivalries and betrayals – founded on a shared vision of a political Utopia every bit as alluring and illusory today as it was then. Published, finally and fortuitously, in what is both an election year and the centenary of the first Labour government in Britain, this novel's time has now arrived.’ —David Rose, The Irish Times