"[This] novel brims with unusual optimism as well as his customary wit" - Amanda Craig, Sunday Express
 
"This book, generally so witty, so vivacious and so original, is a gem" - Francis King, The Spectator
 
An 18 year-old Sixth Form girl tells what happened to her when she left her Fenland home determined never to return. Hetty is a spirited, intellectual girl, sustained by English literature in her struggles against a brutish home life. Apart from school friends her favoured companions are Keats and Browning. When she discovers that she was in fact adopted, Hetty runs away from home, in search of her real parents. She finds shelter in Rose Gilpin-Jones' boarding house in Birmingham, where there are eccentric lodgers. She experiences a wider world of ethics, music hall and mass demonstrations, and after many tribulations finds her root-stock (but maybe prefers to flower elsewhere).