This is a book I had to read several reviews about once I had read it to check I hadn’t missed anything and read an interview with Connolly as well. It has to some degree cleared up some of my questions but by no means all.

Erin moves back home, to Belfast, after the death of her best friend whilst she was at university. The relationship with her mother is chaotic and abusive, as is her life. It consists of seeing friends, getting drunk most nights and using drugs along with a changing group of friends and friends of friends. She meets an American called Matt in the bar she drinks at where her friend Declan works and they get together because he seems almost as lonely as she is. She also meets up with an old flame Mikey, a junior doctor and takes up with him again. At one point you do wonder which man she is going to end up with at the end, neither seem like they have potential. She then finds out that both men have other women – one more permanently than the other.

The book feels quite repetitive – always in a bar, listing what they drink which can be anything from Guiness to pineapple cocktails with a slice of orange in it for sophistication, and a kind spin on this would be that it emphasises how lost Erin is. The bars are well described and you get a feel for the atmosphere in each one.

This is not a book that looks back at Belfast but one that tries to sum it up nowadays and it is quite depressing. Modern new-build flats overlooking older parts of town with sectarian graffitti scrawled all over it. Really crappy call centre jobs with no security and several rounds of computer-managed interviews prior to getting the job. Do you have a suitable personality? Men who are messing around and young adults who have to come back and live at home because they can’t afford to do anything else. Is this why the book is called Lazy City?

I do think that the way Connolly describes the place of religion in Erin’s life is interesting; church is used as a place for Erin to sit and reflect on her life and talk to Jesus. She is able to describe her anger and ask why – all the things she can’t speak to her friends or mother about. In fact the churches and the cross and Jesus are described just as much as the pubs. And in all the conversations Erin has with Jesus/God, the sculpture of Jesus just smiles back down at her. It seems a very modern way of using religion – not using the institution. So in answer to the question did Erin get her man, the answer is yes but it just isn’t the man we first thought it might be.

One blurber calls the book ‘bracingly funny’ whereas I would say ‘almost witty’. In the interview I read, Connolly describes having two Matt’s in the story as funny. American Matt and brother of Mikey Matt. Is that funny? I also felt that not having the speech demarcated with speech marks, but written in italics, a way of trying to be contemporary but not really managing it. Why demarcate it at all? The dialogue did genuinely sound Irish and a kind heart would say that it was so wound up in the prose that it didn’t need traditional demarcation but that is making the device fit a reason rather than the reason being obvious.

It is a book of really mixed qualities.