Contacts: From the award-winning comedian, the most heartwarming, touching and funny fiction book

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I found the ending, after the build-up through the majority of the book, a little brief and almost jarringly unexpected. The book did a pretty good job drawing the various characters, switching between following our suicidal main character and some of the recipients of his middle-of-the-night text. Featuring delicate butterflies set amongst luscious lemon trees which are full of the zesty fruit and flowering blossoms, this contact book is perfect for keeping all your contacts together. The other two are given to Abonnema Eda, a Nigerian physicist credited with discovering the theory of everything, and Xi Qiaomu, a Chinese archaeologist and expert on the Qin dynasty.

James is a good man; kind, intelligent and curious, but a series of events have sent him spiralling. At the President's insistence, Ellie agrees to meet with two religious leaders, Billy Jo Rankin and Palmer Joss. It made me sad, and it made me smile, and I would recommend if it sounds like something you'd enjoy.I did have a couple of issues with it: the use of stereotypes, and (without spoilers) the execution of the ending, but overall I found it thought provoking and clever. It is transmitted by text, so it's soon being read by an ever-growing number of relatives, friends, workmates, girlfriends and lodgers. One of Mark Watson's previous novels, Eleven, is counted amongst my favourites and I enjoy both his humour and his writing. Ellie is reunited with the other four travellers, who have also met simulations of their loved ones. By nature we are social creatures who require human contact for the sake of our mental wellbeing yet we are now living in a climate where we have little control over our ability/desire to nurture our friendships or embark on new relationships.

This book is an interesting one, it deals primarily with suicide and so it is a heavy book but Mark Watson (who is also a comedian) manages to infuse this book with some lighthearted moments as well.

Sagan named the novel's protagonist, Eleanor Arroway, after two people: Eleanor Roosevelt, a "personal hero" of Sagan's wife, Ann Druyan, and Voltaire, whose last name was Arouet. After seeing that Hadden is apparently dead and the transmission has somehow been stopped without a 26-year delay, government officials accuse the travellers of an international conspiracy.

When Ellie looks at what the computer has found, she sees a circle rasterized from 0s and 1s that appear after 10 20 places in the base 11 representation of π. Then they put the whole thing together in the factory as a dry run before taking it apart, labelling each piece, and transporting it to London for installation at the hotel. I enjoyed the style of story telling, but felt that it was unfinished at the point of resolution for James. I had some Chinese glazed bowls that were just the right colour and John took those back to the NBK factory in Germany. I never imagined loving this book as much as I did and although it did take me a while to get through (purely because I need to be in the right state of mind to read something so heavy), it was amazing and truly heartbreaking.It felt like we weren't supposed to care about that as much, just because we didn't know her as well. It reflects a society where human contact is severely lacking for many, lives instead lived online in a virtual reality, loneliness a common problem. He sends a message to his 158 contacts in his phone to say goodbye, and then switches it to flight mode. For me this book was a little let down by its ending, even as I was reading I wasn't entirely sure what ending I was wanting. It’s impossible to ignore the paradoxical nature of mobile phones and modern technology that can both increase self inflicted isolation or else provide our only means of communicating with a world that to all intents and purposes has temporarily shut down.

There was a bit of a bland “Let’s talk more” underlying message but I hardly expected anything else. My precis: someone threatens to do something, then nothing happens for a good 90% of the book before a different thing happens that feels inappropriate and unsatisfactory.

Contacts allows you to connect with anyone interested in a performing career plus more than 65,000 Spotlight members including thousands of top agents and the cream of UK and international casting professionals. When I read a book like this I’m looking for something that will keep me turning the page, and this definitely met that standard. We met them a long time ago when we were doing two restaurants in Bournemouth (they have a factory in Poole) and have worked with them ever since on many restaurants and hotels such as the public areas at Chiltern Firehouse, Decimo at The Standard London and lots of the Busaba restaurants. Though in the mind of someone suicidal, the other viewpoints could also be read as more "that'll teach them, let me get my revenge this way, I want them to feel this scared and guilty" or "that's the way to get people to treat me better/appreciate me more" points in favor of suicide/suicide threats.