You’ll have noticed them on the roads, minibuses, full of schoolgirls, being driven by harassed teachers to some country location where the girls will be put through end-of-term, healthy outdoor activities, protesting all the way. Among any group of eight 13-year-olds there’ll be a victim, a loner, a leader, and so on – it’s been the stuff of many a novel since Lord of the Flies, but it is Bella Bathurst’s considerable achievement to bring to this scenario something contemporary and fresh.
Right from the beginning, there is a ferocious undertone to this story. Anyone familiar with modern teenage girls will recognise the authenticity of the dialogue – brutal, vulgar, full of jeers and sneers understood only by themselves. It zips along at a terrific rate, especially between Caz, Jules and Hen, the three central characters. They smoke, they yearn for sex, they are foul-mouthed, and yet at the same time they are touching, each so desperate to be ‘special’, not to have a dull life ahead of them.
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