Press Reviews

• Elizabeth Buchan

  Sunday Times

  The author's astute observation underpins her clever, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant evocation of a coming of age

• Samira Shackle

  New Statesman

  Bakewell is at her best evoking the excitement of the early days of television. Her most effective portraits are those of the Granada Studios. Bakewell vividly evokes the modernity of the building in Manchester, the vibrant atmosphere and the mingling of staff in the canteen ... Bakewell's attention to detail is impeccable... [An] affectionate conjuring of an era gone by

• Amber Pearson

  Daily Mail

  Plenty of wry humour. Many of Joan Bakewell's observations and anecdotes also convey the distinct impression of personal experience - particularly once timid Martha reaches Liverpool, where she finds herself surprisingly at home among her new bohemian friends, her horizons broadened by such heady delights as poetry readings, CND protests, sex and Earl Grey tea

• Vanessa Berridge

  Daily Express

  An accomplished writer of fiction on the evidence of this, her second novel ... Bakewell conjures up Liverpool and a dreary nearby town in the early Sixties, sensitively portraying through her characterisation an era on the cusp between post-war privation and Sixties hedonism ... Bakewell does capture both the intense self-absorption of the young and the disappointments of middle age in what is a very readable and perceptive novel

• Elizabeth Buchan

  Sunday Times

  'The author's astute observation underpins her clever, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant evocation of a coming of age'

• Samira Shackle

  New Statesman

  'Bakewell is at her best evoking the excitement of the early days of television. Her most effective portraits are those of the Granada Studios. Bakewell vividly evokes the modernity of the building in Manchester, the vibrant atmosphere and the mingling of staff in the canteen . . . Bakewell's attention to detail is impeccable . . . [An] affectionate conjuring of an era gone by'

• Amber Pearson

  Daily Mail

  'Plenty of wry humour. Many of Joan Bakewell's observations and anecdotes also convey the distinct impression of personal experience - particularly once timid Martha reaches Liverpool, where she finds herself surprisingly at home among her new bohemian friends, her horizons broadened by such heady delights as poetry readings, CND protests, sex and Earl Grey tea'

• Vanessa Berridge

  Daily Express

  An accomplished writer of fiction on the evidence of this, her second novel . . . Bakewell conjures up Liverpool and a dreary nearby town in the early Sixties, sensitively portraying through her characterisation an era on the cusp between post-war privation and Sixties hedonism . . . Bakewell does capture both the intense self-absorption of the young and the disappointments of middle age in what is a very readable and perceptive novel