Semple describes the book as “ Brideshead Revisited meets Sabrina in bohemian 80s London”, and on the back cover, Meg Rosoff also mentions Brideshead, and places it in the 1970s. Its young protagonist, Katherine Browne, admits to compensating for her natural timidity “with odd flashes of bravado”.Ī dozen pages in, and it feels as if an unknown hand has casually flicked on every light in the house, inadvertently blowing all the fuses. Irreverent and sweary, undeniably sexy, this coming-of-age novel plunges ahead unselfconsciously and with unusual candour. It shimmers among this year’s company of books like some brightly coloured, sharp-witted, mini-skirted dolly bird from the 1960s who has gate-crashed a stuffy dinner party. Few books survive four decades of near-obscurity and still dazzle, but Trapido’s book does just that.
