The first sentence of the novel hooked me: ‘The day my father was arrested for murder began promisingly’. But after the first hundred or so pages, I began to feel much the same about the book. The narrator, 22-year-old Harriet, takes part in a violent demonstration, and is clearly in a rather degrading relationship. Worse, her sister Portia suffers humiliation and serious abuse. I could not conceive how this could be billed as a 'social comedy'. The only mildly amusing parts are their parents' frequent quotations from Shakespeare, and even those palled after a few chapters. The father is likeable enough, but the mother is selfish and neglectful.

However, the novel improves greatly when Harriet and her younger sister Cordelia are invited to stay at a stately home over Christmas. The house-party inevitably contains a variety of individuals, most of them caricatured, but that didn't matter. I didn't like the owner of the house, who is far too fond of young girls, and treats his wife appallingly. But the others are somewhat amusing in their interactions; Harriet is an interesting and self-deprecating narrator.

The writing is good, as with all this author’s novels, and the pace exactly right for my tastes. By about half way through, I could barely put it down. The ending is partly predictable but not entirely. Overall I didn’t like this book as much as the earlier ones by this author, but I look forward to reading more of her works.

I would award about two-and-a-half stars for the first part of the book, but closer to four for the latter half. ( )

I’m not entirely sure what this book was supposed to be; it seemed to have ambitions to be a larger-than-life comedy of manners, something in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh perhaps, but the author didn’t appear to have the strength to sustain the exercise. Weak and rather silly. ( )