Panic in the offices of Penguin? The publisher has just released the first novel of former Smiths singer Morrissey. And the early reviews of List of the Lost have not been kind. And that’s putting it kindly.

The slim book, which is set in Boston, concerns itself with a college sports relay team. The author has himself said of it, “the theme is demonology … the left-handed path of black magic.” Its critics, however, have been lining up to damn the result.

The Guardian’s Michael Hann was the most scathing. “All those who shepherded it to print should hang their heads in shame, for it’s hard to imagine anything this bad has been put between covers by anyone other than a vanity publisher,” he wrote. He went on to describe the novel as “the stale excrement of Morrissey’s imagination,” and told prospective readers not to “sully” themselves with it.

Meanwhile the Daily Telegraph opted to publish an article headlined “the 10 most embarrassing lines” and regular Herald contributor Julie McDowall tweeted: “There are some appalling sentences in the new Morrissey novel. How can this be the man who wrote How Soon Is Now?”

The novel’s sex scenes have been singled out for ridicule. It’s possible the singer may find himself nominated for next year’s Bad Sex in Fiction award.

List of the Lost is not Morrissey’s first book of course. In October 2013 he published his memoir, entitled Autobiography, published under the Penguin Classics imprint at its author’s insistence. Autobiography was an instant success, selling almost 35,000 copies in its first week in print.

Autobiography even managed to get some good reviews too. Indeed, the celebrated literary critic Terry Eagleton was among its fans, even suggesting that Morrissey could even be a future Booker Prize winner.

If List of the Lost appears on the Booker Prize longlist next year, however, Britain’s literary critics might well explode.