Euphemia MacFarrigle and the Laughing Virgin

Three pregnant virgins languish in a West End convent while news spreads about an Episcopalian clergyman's outsize member. As the Catholic archbishop struggles to shake off a mysterious farting virus, a secret ring of respectable middle-class housewives stockpiles condoms. At the local Jesuit secondary school, two adolescents fall in and out of love. The Vatican's Special Emissary discovers a cure for his itching. A miraculous Madonna starts to laugh, and no wonder.

Can all this really be the work of Euphemia MacFarrigle? Who is she and where did she come from? Is she a man or a woman? An angel or a devil? And what exactly did she put into that fairy cake?

Magical realism brings havoc to the lives of Glasgow's baffled citizenry in Christopher Whyte's delicious first novel, a sophisticated literary soap opera where Armistead Maupin links arms with Mikhail Bulgakov. Tirelessly inventive and outrageously funny, it is nevertheless a moving indictment of the misery religious and sexual prejudice can cause.