A Very Nice Girl
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
A GRAZIA BOOK OF THE YEAR
SELECTED FOR MALALA'S BOOK CLUB
'Tender, devastating, witty. And deeply true. Sweetbitter meets Normal People' MEG MASON, author of SORROW AND BLISS
'Haunting and bleakly compelling ... A writer of promise' SUNDAY TIMES
'An absorbing debut about sex and power' GUARDIAN
'Elegant and witty ... A precursor to great things' THE TIMES
'One of the buzziest debut novels this spring' VOGUE
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2022 BY VOGUE AND ESQUIRE
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A bitingly honest, darkly funny debut about love, sex, power and desire, by a major new British talent
Anna is struggling to afford life in London as she trains to be a singer. During the day, she vies to succeed against her course mates with their discreet but inexhaustible streams of cultural capital and money, and in the evening she sings jazz at a bar in the City to make ends meet.
It's there that she meets Max, a financier fourteen years older than her. Over the course of one winter, Anna's intoxication oscillates between her hard-won moments on stage, where she can zip herself into the skin of her characters, and nights spent with Max in his glass-walled flat overlooking the city.
But Anna's fledgling career demands her undivided attention, and increasingly – whether he necessarily wills it or not – so does Max…
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'Touching on feminism, power, finances and the pleasures and dangers of a new relationship, this book is an assured debut' CLAIRE FULLER, author of the Women's Prize-shortlisted UNSETTLED GROUND
'Imogen Crimp captures the glittering thrill of being young and choosing your own life with a dark, unflinching undercurrent of desire, power and control' JESSICA ANDREWS, author of SALTWATER
'A blazing, darkly funny debut that captures a young woman's search to find herself ... It has an honesty and tenderness that will stay with me for a long time' RACHEL JOYCE
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Crimp's modest debut follows a cash-strapped London opera student who gets in a bit too deep with an older man. Anna, 24, falls for 30-something Max after he chats her up at a bar. Though they keep the relationship casual at first, Anna begins to spend more time with the cagey Max, who works in finance and reveals little about himself other than the fact that he is separated from his wife. Soon, Max sets her up in an apartment of her own and gives her money so she can quit her side jobs, and she starts blowing off lessons and rehearsals to be at his beck and call. Anna continues to drift away from her art until an audition before a panel of creepy older men traumatizes her to the point of not being able to sing at all. Crimp layers her characters with personality and crafts smart moments of humanity and observation ("there was nowhere obvious for me to stand," Anna narrates tellingly of an awkward audition), yet the story hinges on well-worn, predictable tropes of romance, dependency, and the struggling artist. As a result, it's too easy to see where things are headed. Crimp's characters, while memorable, cannot escape a garden-variety plot.
