Milk, sulphate and Alby Starvation

Title: Milk, sulphate and Alby Starvation
Author: Martin Millar
Published: 1987 by Fourth Estate (this edition from 1994)
Genre: Humorous fiction
Pages: 152


I don't know how many times I've read this book (in Finnish, though) since the first time I found it in the library about half my lifetime ago. Obviously I liked it since I've gone back to it so many times. (I always thought Stacey was a girl since it's a girly name to me and Finnish doesn't differentiate between he and she, we only have one word that applies for both genders. Live and learn.)

It's a fast book to read, it being so relatively short and written in shortish bits which tell the story from the point of view of many people: Alby himself, a small-time drug dealer and comic enthusiast, the assassin sent after him by the Milk Marketing Board, the Chinese man also after him, and several other people. And everyone seems to want something from Alby, be it money, speed, his Silver Surfers or his life. Poor Alby.

I like this book.


"There is some deep relationship between the unpleasantness of food and its nuritional value but I'm afraid it's beyond my mental capacity to work it out. It seems like someone's trying to teach me a lesson, if you're going to get through life Alby, you just got to eat the odd bit of spinach now and then."