Abbie Fenton wants a baby. Her husband Felix, not unaware of the thunderous ticking of Abbie's biological clock, wants to oblige but their home has still to be blessed. Cue the usual round of doctors, tests, probes and scans - all to no avail.

So Abbie - adopted at birth - decides that if she can't have a child then she must at least discover whose child she is. Soon, she and Felix are caught up in a make-or-break search for family, identity and meaning. And little do they know quite where the journey will take them ...

The White Stuff announces Simon Armitage, one of our nation's leading and award-winning poets, as one of our greatest novelists.

'Superb, very impressive, grimly funny ... I lay on the floor and howled with laughter' Independent

'With plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, touchy-feely bits and some choice observations about the things that men do, Armitage gives Hornby a run for his money' Daily Mirror