A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp

Anna is struggling to afford life in London as she trains to be a singer. During the day, she fights to succeed against her fellow students with their discreet but inexhaustible streams of cultural capital and money, and in the evenings she sings jazz at a bar in the City to make ends meet.

It's there that she meets Max, a financier fourteen years older than her in the middle of a divorce -- though he can't bring himself to say the word. Over the course of one winter, Anna's intoxication oscillates between her hard-won moments on stage, where she can zip herself into the skin of her characters, and the nights spent with Max in his glass-walled flat overlooking the city.

But Anna's fledgling career demands her undivided attention, and increasingly -- whether he necessarily wills it or not -- so does Max.

A bitingly honest, darkly funny debut about love, sex, power and desire, A Very Nice Girl cracks open the timeless questions of what it is to be young, what it is to want to be wanted, what it is to find your calling and lose your way to it.

Genres: Contemporary - Literary Fiction - Romance - Coming of Age - Music