Algorithm Party is a debut publication in which an utterly original, fully-formed literary voice announces itself, somehow full of life, on the page. Liverpool’s spoken-word performer Roy’s deft, articulate and startlingly observed stories veer from the comic to the calamitous in a breath, cutting to the quick of the broad swathe of people and personalities that comprise his native city, from struggling parents to small-time criminals, pent-up white-collar workers to drinkers long lost to the ale. Roy’s eye is as keen as it is generous, presenting, in the great tradition of English realism, the real lives of people up against it in all sorts of ways, muddling through, trying to make the best of it.