There's No ‘F’ In Wonderful

A disillusioned, drug-soaked intellectual is escaping ‘The Heat’ – both literal and metaphorical – by relocating to a new town in the North. What follows is a surreal immersion into the region’s club culture, where fevered dancing, shadowy relationships, and the rituals of nightlife blur the boundaries between reality and delirium. Employment as a croupier leads to encounters with a cast of eccentric figures, none more vivid than Christine – a ‘Superstar Croupier’ whose fierce individuality, joy and pain mark her as the radiant centre of the novel.

Set in Leeds during the height of the Northern Soul explosion in the seventies, There’s No ‘F’ in Wonderful is at once hilariously funny and deeply unsettling, exploring the magical yet disorienting passage between adolescence and adulthood—a time when anything seems possible, even as the world insists otherwise.

Broady has long written for those who remain irrepressibly young in heart and spirit. With There’s No ‘F’ in Wonderful, he delivers a strange, glorious celebration of resilience, joy, and defiant living. Or as the book itself insists: Live! Live! Live!

‘Here the human drama in the uncertain days just after Punk is brought to life in an X-rated screwball comedy set in a Northern casino – told with Broady’s unique gift for extravagant but just-right simile, for twisted romance, and for unexpected pathos.’ — Richard Price

‘Bill Broady’s There’s No ‘F’ in Wonderful vividly resurrects an all but vanished world of smoky casinos and Northern Soul discos, bringing to life a ribald, unique suite of oddball characters who stay in one’s mind long after the novel is finished. Shot through with tenderness and humour, Broady’s ability to evoke time and place – 1970s Yorkshire – with sublime melancholia and brio at once is unparalleled.’ — Jean McNeil

‘A novel of rhythm and hope, set in a Leeds instantly recognisable to anyone who experienced it, Broady works with broad Northern humour, neatly shot through with brains, all held together with writing that’s subtle, sometimes beautiful, sometimes raw, to create an unforgettable story.’ — Chris Nickson