Compulsion

From the first page of this debut novel, the reader is hurled at breakneck speed into the machinations, romances and compelling compulsivity of Lucy Luxe and her friends. Lucy is a music journalist who’s thrown it all away (quite literally, in the case of her phone) to live in her grandfather’s house in the country so she can straighten out, sober up, slow down and finally complete that book she’s been commissioned to write. But despite her best intentions, Lucy’s love of excess compels her to have constant parties with friends who travel up from the city each weekend to get wasted and enjoy Lucy’s hospitality.

Into this hedonistic world comes Robin – handsome and watchful – who has more in common with this group than he initially lets on. Some of the classic novels down through the years have used the sidelined observer to provide commentary on the lives of the glamorous young things that they’ve somehow become mixed up with – think Nick Carraway narrating The Great Gatsby, and Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited. The idea of the less-cool, somewhat-removed friend watching from the sidelines is, to a degree, what we have here with Robin, who remains at arms-length for much of the book as friendships and romances tangle up and unravel, and sex lives are discussed and dissected.

The common thread that unites all these disparate friends is their obsessive knowledge of 70s, 80s and 90s music. Like Lucy Luxe, Kate Scott was a music journalist and brings her encyclopaedic knowledge to the conversations between these friends. You might not know all the references, especially if you didn’t grow up in the nineties, but it doesn’t matter – the point of the conversations is what they reveal about each of the characters. If you like your books with lashings of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, all wrapped up in quick-witted prose, this is perfect for you.

Gabrielle Williams was the much-loved Readings Prize manager and Readings Foundation grants officer.