Best Laid Plans

A mother searches for love for her autistic son with hilarious consequences in this laugh-out-loud novel from Kathy Lette. As a crossword-addicted English teacher, Lucy never expected to be arrested for kerb-crawling. But her autistic twenty-year-old son Merlin is desperate to lose his virginity, and a sex worker seems like the only option... only Lucy picks up an undercover policewoman instead. Let off with a suspended sentence, Lucy resigns herself to the fact that her son will never have sex, let alone find love… until the morning she miraculously discovers Merlin in bed with a girl. But is tough, tattooed Kayleigh just taking him for a ride? And what has brought Lucy's snake of an ex-husband wriggling back into their lives? As all her best laid plans for Merlin's happiness chaotically unravel, will Lucy ever be able to cut her son's psychological umbilical cord and start to live her own life? Praise for Best Laid Plans: 'An important and poignant subject – a mother's search for the perfect girlfriend for her grown-up son with autism – that is also a hilarious and entertaining page-turner, written with Lette's inimitable irreverence, brio and wit.' JILL DAWSON 'Deliciously rude and darkly funny, but with compassion and humanity at its heart. Read with relish.' NICOLE KIDMAN 'Kathy Lette can turn from raunchy farce to the most tender emotion in a trice: this unputdownable book wrenches the heart and the laugh muscles with stunning panache.' STEPHEN FRY