Description
Book SynopsisMichaelmas term, 1940. 18-year-old John Kemp has come down from Lancashire to Oxford University to begin his scholarship studying English. But when he invents an imaginary sister to win the attention of a rich but unreliable ''friend'', and then falls in love for real, undergraduate life becomes its own strange world
Absolutely contemporary - perhaps even prophetic.'' Joyce Carol Oates
Remarkable A book about innocence.' Simon Garfield
''A cryptic literary manifesto [about] discovering a literary personality, and the consolation art can provide.'' Andrew Motion
Trade Review"'The qualities one has learned to value in his poetry are there: control of emotion and language, keen observation, and in particular the very precise expression of half-success, anticipated failure or sadness.' New Statesman; 'Jill is, in a sense, a kind of cryptic literary manifesto. It is a novel about writing, about discovering a literary personality, and about the sorts of consolation that art can provide.' Andrew Motion"
