Tell Me If the Lovers are Losers

Vintage Voigt - a rare treat! First published in America in 1982, the book is set in 1961 and follows the fortunes of three very different room-mates - Niki, Hildy and Ann - as they embark on college life together.

There is a not displeasing rawness about the writing, a preoccupation with detail, a looser quality than Voigt's later works, but the wisdoms, the insights and the sheer power of all her work are absolutely intact here. Hildy is the most remarkable character - she feels and sounds so much like the Voigt who lights a reader's way through a universally shared problem or reduces a situation overlaid with myth and hysteria to the simplicity of its component parts. Niki and Ann don't fade beside her, they merely play a different sort of part.

This is a novel of exploration rather than event, though the shared medium of college life ensures a coherent and readable structure: fourth and fifth-year classes are in for a treat!