An East End [of London] woman decides to write a letter to Osama bin Laden after a team of his suicide bombers wreck her life by indiscriminately blowing up the crowd at a football match, killing both her husband and her four-and-a-quarter year-old son, along with over a thousand other football fans. The letter is written, mainly in the authentic language of an East End gal, but with snippets of people from other worlds. The grammar and punctuation is appaling, but it is totally in context. She relates, to Osama, all of the events and all of her feelings from immediately before the atrocity to many months afterwards. There is a lot of humour interspersed throughout the tragedy. One of the funniest passages that I have read recently will not spoil your enjoyment of this book. It didn’t smell posh in Harvey Nichols it smelled of all the different perfumes in the world very strong and mixed up together. It felt like having your throat scraped. I took my boy into John Lewis once and it smelled just like that in the perfume section. Yuk Mummy he said. It smells nice and nasty all at once. It smells of angels feet. Hilarious! I can understand why some people do not like this style of writing and cannot get into the book at all. This is a book that you will either love or hate. It is either one star or five stars plus plus. I cannot tell what it will be like for you, but I would recommend that you give it a chance. For me, it was one of the best books that I read in 2009.

This the third, I have read by Chris Cleave, and they are each entirely different from one another, I would highly recommend them all; they are mostly unputdownable. This rather clever author, takes you on a unforgettable journey, yet you reel from the shock for days. The tale is a sad one, and like his others, you care so very much about the chracters. Interesting to note that the "mum" nor "her chaps" had names (or did I miss them!) Thank you Chris Cleave for this awesome tale, beautifully told.

This book had me from the first few pages and never let me go. I was distracted through the early part by the verbatim grammar of a modern east end mum, but I suspect Chris Cleave is spot on and we will see "should of" becoming an accepted alternative for "should have" any day now. The storyline is full of shocks and surprises with prose ranging from startling, to poignant, to jaw-dropping. I absolutely loved this book; the concept, the unfolding tale and the brilliance of the author's ideas. To potential buyers - read this now. To Chris Cleave - thank you so very much.

Having read and enjoyed Cleave's The Other Hand, I was prepared for the starkness of his writing. Even so, I was shocked by the intensity of the emotions portrayed in this letter to Bin Laden - it is powerful and it is raw. It is shocking and does not shy away from exposing the sheer terror and violence imposed by humans on to other humans. I would have given 5 stars, but I felt that the story strayed a little towards the end.