Nicola Monaghan

London's equivalent of Wall Street is one crazy place, especially for young women. Frankie tries to break in as a trader and deals with the accompanying sex, drugs and rock and roll (well, everything except the rock and roll). It's decadent and exhausting. I have no personal experience with that world, but I don't think I could survive.

Incredibly grim story of a girl growing up on a drug-addled Nottingham housing estate. The grimness is made bearable by moments of great tenderness, between protagonist Kerrie Ann and her boyfriend Mark, but this is tempered by the fact that, the closer Kerrie Ann gets to Mark, the deeper she is sucked into a vortex of drug abuse. Compelling stuff, but so horrendous that I had to take a break between the more intense chapters, and read something more straightforwardly escapist.

Not like the Nottingham I remember but then I was born in a different time!