University is a life-defining event for almost everyone who goes there, often the first time away from home too, and so a necessary coming of age. This is all the more so for Adele, the novel's narrator, who has lost her father, through suicide, and escaped the claustrophobic confines of Liverpool's Jewish community. Grant consciously acknowledges at the outset of the work that there is a semi-autobiographical element to it. One wonders how much? All the characters seem to be running away from something (the mother of one was raped, another seeks an abortion in the first week of term). Set against personal backstory and trauma is the inevitable optimism that early '70s student life promised: a chance to test new ideas and foment possible revolution, the hope for a better world. Grant's eye for detail in capturing the zeitgeist of the period is as good as her writing anywhere else. There is also poignancy as the novel and the characters' lives move into the 1980s and beyond, a sense of yearning tinged with scepticism is a fair summary. While all the loose ends are tied up by the conclusion, the challenge for the reader is to distinguish Grant's self-indulgent exercise in nostalgia with a fully cohesive piece of fiction. Good, thought-provoking—I reminisced over my own university days—but by no means her best work, eight and a half out of ten.
By Linda Grant