... zany, eccentric and free ... The novel is very dialogue-heavy, much of the conversation between Min and her women friends being about sex and men and how awful men are. It may be the benefit of hindsight, but the novel does seem very much of its time, the Swinging Sixties. One could imagine it being filmed by Richard Lester, starring Suzy Kendall as Min and Oliver Reed as the Bloater with a great sound track by the Spencer Davis Group ... Yet the sly intellectual froth and sexy fun of the novel is counterposed by the knowledge of what happened to its author — her chronic health problems, profound spiritual anguish and rejection of everything she had achieved as a young writer. Paradoxically the story of Tonks’s astounding efforts in seeking oblivion, ensuring the non-existence of her literary self, and being so successful in achieving it, has brought her a degree of posthumous fame that her shade would deeply resent. Despite everything she did there will now be a small corner of the 20th-century English novel reserved for her unique example. Stewart Lee’s introduction to this new edition, it should be noted, is typically astute and funny.
The novel offers a whistle-stop tour of 1960s London, lively with scents and sounds, and Min’s restlessness reflects a certain dissatisfaction with the reality of free love. At times, Tonks’s writing feels rooted in its immediate milieu, but often the voice is breathtakingly modern. Her reprieve from obscurity is cause for celebration.