Paperback review: The Secret Lives of Men and Women

Described as “hilarious and heart-warming”, this is a deeply weird book based on a US website that features anonymous postcard messages.

They’re not dirty but prudish in a particularly American way: “Every time I’m alone in an elevator I take the opportunity to pass gas.” As you might imagine, they’re often creepily self-centred: “To the class of 1977 I still hate all of you.” Unsurprisingly, the obsessions of middle America emerge as anti-abortion, religion, subterfuge and anxiety. The oddest thing of all about these postal tweets is that this is the third Instalment. Quite baffling.