Last Orders, by Graham Swift (Picador £5.99 in UK)

Lenny, Vic, Ray and Vince set off to carry out their late friend Jack's out-of character last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea. Graham Swift's tale of a lads' day out has been garlanded not just with last year's Booker Prize, but with acclaim from reviewers of every hue as an elegiac celebration of ordinary lives. This reviewer, alas, found its narrative voices confusingly similar, and the studiously deadpan tone mind-numbing and the second-division status of the women characters frustrating. A grave disappointment for me, then - but everybody else loved it.