Very Nice Girl

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARA GRAZIA BOOK OF THE YEARSELECTED FOR MALALA'S BOOK CLUB'Tender, devastating, witty. And deeply true. Sweetbitter meets Normal People' MEG MASON, author of SORROW AND BLISS'Haunting and bleakly compelling ... A writer of promise' SUNDAY TIMES'An absorbing debut about sex and power' GUARDIAN'Elegant and witty ... A precursor to great things' THE TIMES‘One of the buzziest debut novels this spring’ VOGUECHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2022 BY VOGUE AND ESQUIREA bitingly honest, darkly funny debut about love, sex, power and desire, by a major new British talentAnna is struggling to afford life in London as she trains to be a singer. During the day, she vies to succeed against her course mates with their discreet but inexhaustible streams of cultural capital and money, and in the evening 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. 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 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…'Touching on feminism, power, finances and the pleasures and dangers of a new relationship, this book is an assured debut' CLAIRE FULLER, author of the Women's Prize-shortlisted UNSETTLED GROUND'Imogen Crimp captures the glittering thrill of being young and choosing your own life with a dark, unflinching undercurrent of desire, power and control' JESSICA ANDREWS, author of SALTWATER‘A blazing, darkly funny debut that captures a young woman’s search to find herself ... It has an honesty and tenderness that will stay with me for a long time' RACHEL JOYCE

Tender, devastating, witty. And deeply true. Sweetbitter meets Normal People, This promising debut charts the edgy relationship of a young woman and older man... Crimp’s prose is elegant and witty... a precursor to great things from an interesting new voice in fiction, This is a haunting, bleakly compelling debut. .. Jean Rhys’s aching Voyage in the Dark is a source for this unflinching study of male-female power dynamics. Things should have moved on more since Rhys’s 1934 novel, yet Anna’s shabby London circumstances and relationship feel grimly plausible. A deftly structured commercial literary debut by a writer of promise, Imogen Crimp's enjoyable debut novel ... is an all-too-real reminder of what it is to be a woman in your 20s, searching for who you are, trying on identities or stuck in a complicated pseudo-relationship even when you know you shouldn’t be. It’s a book about assessing your worth through other people’s eyes - parents, friends, a lover - and about being observed: by an overprotective mother, by men on the tube, by those who assess her auditions, by classmates competing for her slot, and ultimately by the audience, Wonderful ... A beautifully written examination of the psychology of sex, power, ambition and love and it’s particularly brilliant on being insecure about who you are

Imogen Crimp has an MA in contemporary literature from UCL, where she specialised in female modernist writers. After university, she initially trained to be an opera singer, studying at a conservatoire. She lives and works in London.

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