A depressing book.

I've just finished reading Last Orders by Graham Swift about four old blokes coming to the end of their miserable lives, having made no attempt to get out their tedious working ruts, or to raise their social lives above beer drinking and betting on the horses. Their wives have left them, or are so distant they might as well not be there. Their children are even bigger failures (two are prostitutes, another brain damaged and, worst of all, one is a used car salesman.) I read this after a Wodehouse omnibus - what a come down!