Ah yes, the old "If I had a rock band" novel. Lots of novelists have tried, and most have failed. The tricky thing about writing a good rock'n'roll novel is that most novelists are shit musicians, and their fictional hits very rarely sound like something anyone would ever want to listen to.

So hey, write about the Eurovision where a song being euphorically shit is part of the draw.

Disclaimer: I loathe the Eurovision Song Contest. And yet I love this story of mankind being forced to participate in an intergalactic song contest to prove that we're sentient (and not a threat to intergalactic peace). Valente shamelessly pilfers her tone from Douglas Adams (and admits as much in the afterw... sorry, liner notes), but suffuses the whole novel with her own ideas: overstuffing it with all the glitter, glam, and just plain gleeful silliness you'd expect of a tale of a has-been glam rock band forced to get back together to compete in the silliest competition you could imagine, where the underlying darkness of devastating war and encroaching fascism can only be met with mirror balls, sequined gowns, and sexually ambiguous pop music.

Life is beautiful. And life is stupid.

I'll be damned if she almost makes me appreciate the ESC unironically. Almost.