Trouble with Vanessa

This is the first in a trilogy about four students embarking on an Arts and Drama course at sixth-form college. Vanessa, Kate, Ned and Danny bring very different experiences and expectations to the new term and one of the book's strengths is its refusal to be overwhelmed by disparity. Instead - largely through the medium of the developing relationship between Ned and Vanessa - the reader is treated to Ure's wryly accurate portrait of student life: uncertainty; precocity, bombast - and that fierce energy peculiar to the young. Although there is sufficient to allow the less committed reader to become involved, the language is often pleasingly challenging and likely to positively engage a keen third or fourth-year reader. Put it in the book box and/or library - and wait for the next!