Great dollops of old-master stagecraft grease the cogs of Anthony Quinn’s prize-winning period fiction. On the second page of his new novel, which runs from VE Day to the early 1960s, the heroine conveniently examines her own reflection (nice to meet you). Her fellow characters routinely pop up as required in an “Ah! Hadn’t seen you there” kind of way, when she’s daydreaming or about to get in her car or just walking in the street. The goal is entertainment, not dreary plausibility, yet there’s psychological chewiness, too.
Quinn’s beat has run from fin-de-siècle slums to 1930s theatreland via Liverpool in the second world war. Now he turns his attention to how horizons broadened (or didn’t) for women after 1945. In London during the victory celebrations, 20-year-old Freya, the daughter of an eminent painter, meets Nancy, aged 18, from Yorkshire. Both want to write. From Oxford staircases to professional life (newsrooms, publishing deals), we follow their friendship before a poisonous falling out leaves them estranged for nearly a decade. Cameo-led subplots of blackmail and murder form a counterpoint to their emotional drama, which snags on a love triangle with another Oxford graduate, Robert.
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