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The Secret Lemonade Drinker
Guy Bellamy

The Secret Lemonade Drinker

It is Christmas time in a small, modern, utterly featureless town somewhere in the Home Counties, where Bobby Booth lives. The main preoccupations of its inhabitants are drink – at the pub generally known as the Planet of the Apes because it is frequented by so many long-haired young men – and gossip, which at Bobby’s closest friend Roland’s Christmas party turns into violence…

Bobby manages a launderette for Roland, who is gross, periodically rich and a man without illusions. Previously Bobby was a school teacher whose class was interrupted one fateful day by slim, blonde journalist, Caroline. Despite Roland’s warning – he believes in sex, not marriage – Bobby marries her.

One evening an attractive brunette wanders into the launderette. It is her second visit, and in no time she has dragged Bobby into bed. Some time before, Bobby has been pronounced sterile. Caroline wants a baby – a baby by a real man, even if it is a milkman. The temptation to yield irrevocably to the charms of the brunette grows powerfully in Bobby. Whether he will yield forms the climax to the novel.

Book Details:

  • Author: Guy Bellamy
  • Published Year: 1977
  • Rights Sold
    • UK: Secker & Warburg
Guy Bellamy

Guy Bellamy

Guy Bellamy was born in Bristol but lived mostly in Surrey. After National Service in Germany with the RAF, he went into journalism and worked on newspapers in Cornwall, Bournemouth, Brighton and Fleet Street including the Daily Express and Sun. He died in 2015.
More about Guy Bellamy

Book Reviews

  • "One of the wittiest books I’ve read in years....a delicious book by a wonderfully funny, aphoristic writer."
    Erica Jong
  • "Must surely mark the arrival of a major new comic talent. I laughed and I laughed, read it in the state of tremulous excitement which must be the nearest we novel reviewers come to an understanding of heavenly bliss…the book is a corker – witty, intelligently observed, well written and original."
    Auberon Waugh, Evening Standard
  • "Expertly engineered sexual comedy…memorably witty."
    Observer
  • "Marvellously funny, a deft satirist, and able effortlessly to keep you reading…his book stands out because he genuinely likes his characters – an extremely rare thing in fiction and something to be celebrated."
    Punch
  • "Very funny…bawdy, witty, sometimes touching, the book more than lives up to its zany title."
    Sun
  • "Great sparkle, confidence and humour…I laughed a lot and have high hopes of Mr Bellamy."
    The Times
  • "Promising light comedy from a budding Leslie Thomas."
    Sunday Telegraph
  • "I haven’t laughed so much since Lucky Jim…a good joke is a good joke."
    Hampstead and Highgate Express
  • "Sparkling...It cracks open a thousand jokes, some old, some new and some blue. As hideously addictive as drink."
    Sunday Times