Contacts: From the award-winning comedian, the most heartwarming, touching and funny fiction book

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Either way it needs a big trigger warning as the entire book is about someone planning to suicide and how they got to that point.

I found it to be poorly written, you think the paragraph is going one way then it meanders off somewhere else. I ended up sitting in a cold bath until 1:30am because I couldn’t wait to see how it ended, which is perhaps all you needed to know (I should probably have put that sentence first).James Chiltern is embarking on his final journey, uncomfortably holed up in a cell like cabin on the London to Edinburgh sleeper train. Some of the recipients James barely knows, but others are about to have their whole days changed by this revelation. Contacts by Mark Watson has such a unique premise and I was intrigued on how it was going to play out. I was also surprised to see (in my Kindle version) the publisher had not included links to suicide support lines. As James takes his own trip down memory lane, he materialises into a character shaped by his kindness and his love for his father rather than as an overweight unemployed unlucky in love man with a propensity to sweat!

I did appreciate Watson's choice to make it not one huge catastrophic event that had made James' make this decision, instead everything that had happened recently just seemed a bit too much, life itself seemed a bit too much, and I think that's something that a worrying proportion of the population can identify with. His books have the same blend of offbeat creativity, humour and thoughtfulness that characterises his stand-up.While his family and friends are desperately trying to reach him, James quietly sits on the sleeper train to Edinburgh with two pork pies, some biscuits and a six-pack, preparing himself for his last 24 hours on earth. Contacts is a brave, original, storyline with a quirky cast of characters and one that will surprise you with its humour. His relationship has broken down and his sister, who lives in Melbourne, hasn’t spoken to him for years after an argument turned into a grudge.

The book did a pretty good job drawing the various characters, switching between following our suicidal main character and some of the recipients of his middle-of-the-night text. I did worry that as the novel progressed I would be dragged into a pit of despair but thankfully there’s lots of moments of levity that lighten the overall tone. He’s one of life’s triers, but his romantic relationship and his career have both fallen apart, and a family relationship has gone wrong as well.From the premise - a man who sends a suicide text to all the contacts in his phone and then puts his phone into flight mode so nobody can reach him to talk him out of it - I expected to spend the entire time being furiously angry at the main character for pulling a stunt like that. We learn all about him from his contacts, and learn quickly that this is not someone doing this for attention. Funny and wise, tender and deeply moving, Contacts is a beautiful story about the weight of loneliness, the importance of kindness – and how it’s never too late to reach out. Suicide is a tough subject to explore and although we do get insight into James’ state of mind, it’s not the only thing driving the novel. It's realistic, I guess, that someone suicidal wouldn't do a complete 180 over the course of a single day.

The novel’s concept itself is brilliant, and while, in some ways, I want to know more about some of the other people who get the message, I think it works well just focusing on a handful, so we don’t get overwhelmed and lose focus.

It began with promise, but ultimately didn't really go anywhere with most of the characters and the ending was very unsatisfying. I just found it a little unbelievable and shocking but not in a good way the fact that the lady from the train talked him down and then killed herself? In January he'd received just two texts in an entire week, and one of them was to offer him two-for one pizzas if he replied with the word PEPPERONI. Contacts follows the story of James Chiltern, a middle-aged man who has decided that he will commit suicide in Edingborough, as he sits on the sleeper train to the city he sends out a message to his contacts, telling them what he is about to do but with no indication of where he is, and then puts his phone on aeroplane mode.