Brilliantly Funny Novel With Amazing Soundtrack - Rated 
Do I Love You? is a perfect combination of slapstick and wry (and sometimes not very wry) social commentary. It centres on hapless lollipop man Minty Trebor's efforts to revisit the Northern Soul scene of his youth, and the scepticism his put-upon partner, Hazel, and his grunge-loving teenage son, Nigel, aka Trebbo, feel about a forty year old with love handles attempting "very athletic dancing".
The tight plot involves a naked goat ("particularly naked..."), concentric drug rings, regular trips to A&E, Nirvana, classic Northern Soul and - like Paul McDonald's previous books 'Surviving Sting' and 'Kiss me Softly, Amy Turtle' - the delights of Walsall.
You also get to meet a great comic character in Blubber-T, a fat adolescent in a Davy Crockett hat, with a taste for "gangster porn", who "can't seem to grasp that Walsall isn't South Central LA". Painfully funny and painfully accurate.
What's great about Do I Love You? is that for all the anarchic shenanigans the book offers something about our own neuroses, obsessions and humiliations with real perception.
It's really a coming-of-age story - sixteen year old Trebbo's and his forty year old dad's, among others - that, like Minty says of the question mark-less title of the song that inspired it, Do I Love You (Indeed I Do), stands as an affirmation of life, in all its strangeness.
An ideal choice to make up that free delivery! - Rated 
There are some books that you pick up that just don't bear any real resemblance to the world in which you reside. Paul McDonald's Do I Love You is an exception. Paul manages to capture the often surreal nature of the Black Country and its inhabitants whilst simultaneously making it a real and lovable place to live.
The novel focuses on the lives of the Trebor family and the unfortunate events that they encounter following a brush with a chicken dippers advert. The father, Minty, is delighted to hear a Northern Soul classic accompany the ad and he undergoes something of a midlife crisis to the horror of his OCD wife and sexually frustrated son. A number of humorous escapades ensue which threaten to destabilize everything that they love and cherish.
If you're looking for an extra purchase to make up that free delivery then I would highly recommend adding this to your order. Not only is it funny, but it convinces and delicately touches like a prized Pensnett prozzie.
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