A hilarious, heart-breaking and decade-spanning portrait of a generation, from the author of The Bird Room

STILL FRIENDS A DECADE ON? WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?

For a while, Ian, Lauren and Paul shared the same friends, the same university, the same dreams and the same potential. Ten years on they are worlds apart. Call centres, charity shops and bedrooms that smell like cabbage were never part of the plan. The real world doesn't look quite like any of them imagined. But when Lauren, in a moment of nostalgia, cracks open a long-forgotten Hotmail account, she comes face to face with the people these three friends used to be . . .

For two of them it will mean a new beginning to an old love story.

Hilarious and heart-breaking, In Real Life paints a searingly honest portrait of a generation and captures a world where human connection is easier than ever before but where relationships remain just as tricky.

"Perfectly captur[es] the simultaneous sweetness and acute embarrassment of those old versions of ourselves that linger at the base of our inboxes" - * Guardian *

"Horribly funny . . . This curate's egg of a novel has some brilliantly bleak touches" - * Daily Mail *

"A thoughtful comedy of manners which has some truly great moments . . . Killen has great comic timing and an eye for the tragedy of little failures" - * Bookmunch *