by Ian D Smith
Google

Although my  novel Stop the World, I Want to Get On is wildly original, it’s not entirely without its influences.

These are its recent competing and comparable books.

Drew Gummerson’s Me and Mickey James (Cape, 2008)
The musical theme, the journey, and the pop group on the road. Characterisation. Being different.

Jon Courtenay Greenwood’s End of the World Blues (Gollancz, 2006)
Escape from the provincial and the mundane, plus the music.

M. John Harrison’s Nova Swing (Gollancz, 2002)
Escape, music, noir, being different.

Toby Litt’s Exhibitionism (Penguin, 2002)
Cool narrative.

Johnathon Franzen’s The Corrections (Fourth Estate, 2001)
Literary realism, life writing, emotional shifts, financial market mayhem and its social effects.

Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Picador, 2000)
Freedom from patriarchal, omniscient narratives.

Magnus Mills’s The Restraint of Beasts (HarperCollins, 1998)
Micro-economics. The gang against the odds (cf TV’s Boys From the Black Stuff). Odd humour. Characterisation.

James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late (Random House, 1994)
Puritanical constraints on narrative. Odd humour.

Read Stop the World, I Want to Get On http://tiny.cc/zdojqw