After being transported to new lodgings near Dalston, accompanied by her Aboriginal spirit guide Phar Lap Jones, her dead 9-year-old son Rude Boy, and a lithopedion foetus, she soon starts to adapt and learn the ways of the dead.

"Self is a manic, inventive stylist who can't leave anything out: literary allusions from Goodnight Moon to Finnegans Wake; discussions of Australian sympathetic magic; a sub-theme about Lily's dentures (dentures also made a cameo appearance in "The North London Book of the Dead").

What with Martin Amis and Zadie Smith, this has certainly been a vintage literary year for teeth, and maybe Self has bitten off more plot than he can chew.

Nonetheless, what How the Dead Live lacks in economy of structure it repays in lavishness of feeling and characterisation.

Lily is a colossal heroine, a nighttown Molly Bloom who memorably reveals herself through her furious monologue.