Fiona Pitt-Kethley has gained a cult following as Britain's most controversial poet. The Misfortunes of Nigel marks her debut as a novelist. 'We don't review books by women in our paper...there simply aren't any good ones to write about.' So says Nigel Hughes, a simplish ex-public-schoolboy, moderately successful as an author and critic. But women still cause Nigel more problems than he cares to admit: women like Karen, the unliberated florist with inconvenient ideas about marriage; Isobel, the bosomy literary editor by whom he is sexually harassed; and, worst of all, his appalling wife Gina, a virago of Italian extraction, who beats him up and spends his pay cheques. Then, at a party to mark the publication of his new novel, Nigel meets Eleanor, an attractive and successful writer of raunchy stories... Nigel's ill-fated career on the London literary circuit is chronicled with deadly accuracy in this satirical, highly amusing first novel.