Hothouse

A bittersweet, funny novel of life on an evening newspaper, without the glittering prizes Helen Stokes, a sensible graduate from Leeds, is running the gossip column on a London newspaper. The diary is a professional springboard for beautiful and brilliant Oxbridge graduates filling in time until better jobs come up. Helen's colleagues are a colourful bunch: Jane Smith, the paper's star writer, unerringly perceptive about people; Piers Lachland, charming, reserved, on his way to the Foreign Office; Jemima Odent, an aspiring actress with whom Piers is in love; Tamara Brook, Jemima's old school friend and rival; Guy Monbiot, a quick-witted bully who finds his nemesis in the internet boom. Helen is both seduced and irritated by this glamorous elite but as time goes on, flaws in the friendships begin to appear and the group unravels. Each character has a fragility, and as the sharp-eyed Jane predicts, the Hothouse kids soon find that privilege can become a curse. It is only when someone dies that the jigsaw pieces of their circle regroup, and Helen discovers that, sometimes, life's disappointments can lead to others being given a second chance.