Gut-wrenching, ingenious, absolutely hilarious, this is the rediscovered story of woman's desperate quest for freedom.

'I'm thirty, and I'm stuck'

Arabella is on an increasingly desperate quest for freedom from her overbearing father and her conspicuously absent brother. But her desire for self-actualisation only ends up leading her into the orbit of a happily married man. A spiky, self-conscious love affair begins, complete with awful dinner dates, devastating kisses and agonising introspection. Can Arabella realise what she wants? Can she escape the trap of being sexy, good and likable?

Back in print after many decades, this is an outstanding novel by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks.

'Salted with wit and peppered with clever images' Guardian

'At their best, the novels are feats of Tonks's earlier personality, shining and acrid in its 'fierce hot-blooded sulkiness'... the glittering triumph of an unscathable ego' London Review of Books

'Writing like this...is far too beautiful and accomplished to be kept off the shelf. It catches like nothing else the smogs, the rodentine genes, the murky post-War grays, the lurking sexual violence of London' Michael Hoffman, Poetry Foundation