Sitting among the rows of tills in Supersafe supermarket in the North of England, the fortunes of a young checkout girl are on the brink of change a Joan on Cigs and Sweets reads all the horoscopes in all the papers first thing. She knows everyone’s zodiac sign, so if she thinks there’s something you should know she’ll stop and whisper your stars in your ear as she passes your till. This morning she stopped at me. ‘Change. Be prepared for it. Good fortune brought by someone dark’ I said, ‘I wish.’ She just nodded sagely and moved on. Maureen from behind said, ‘Probably means when Sunbed Ida brings the change bags round.’ A bittersweet story of a young Northern checkout girl’s rise to fame, Supermarket Supermodel is prize-winning playwright Jim Cartwright’s first foray into novel-writing. Bearing the hallmarks of his best loved plays, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and Road, this tale is an intoxicating mix of the dirty and the surreal, replete with assorted derelicts, drunks and fuck-ups, comic twists, and camp humour. Brimming with cracking original Cartwright dialogue, this rollicking debut will delight his fans in all four corners of the world.