* The dazzling, interwoven range of forms and authentic voices: Sasha the kleptomaniac; Bennie the big-shot record company executive; Scotty the bandmate failure belatedly offered one last chance; Jules, the Giles Coren-style celebrity journalist writing, like Lolita's Humbert, from prison; Lou the sex-loving, woman-hating, age-defying record producer finally laid low; the arts-loving uncle who becomes a reluctant hero.
* The exploration of the universal themes of living, working, loving, befriending, cheating, ageing, reuniting, parenting, degenerating, dying, told through different eyes, genders and generations. None of it depressing; all of it uplifting.
* The potted back-stories and fates of even some of the minor characters: spooled-through lives reminiscent of the stills sequences in Run Lola Run.
* A 12-year-old girl's diary of life with her parents and slightly autistic brother told in the form of self-made computer slides. It may be because I have my own 12-year-old daughter but this quote moved me greatly: "Living here all together was so sweet. Even when we fought. It felt like it would never end. I'll always miss it."
* The way a loving and vulnerable character you're just getting to know, love and recognise is suddenly and shockingly taken from you with no warning and no sentiment.
* The Catcher In The Rye-style account of a suicidal, confused young student's utter dependency on his platonic relationship with the kleptomaniac.
* The evocative descriptions of a woman-hunt in nasty, chaotic Naples and a safari in starry-skied Africa as well as multi-city modern America.
* The chapter when drop-out Scotty catches a fish in New York and presents it to an astonished Bennie in his mogul-office - and the fish-scale sliver between their success and relative failure.
* The way the overlapping stories of fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, daughters, sons, brothers, uncles, nieces and friends interweave across chapters and time, all of them loosely hung together by a shared history of punk and post-punk music. Unforgettable.
