The Cost of Going Free

Fifteen-year-old Sally lives with her twin brother and divorced mother in a household where the quasi-incestuous passions surface in a strident alternation of badinage and vitriol, very vividly transcribed by the author. During the half-term holiday, at a time when Sally's romantic illusions about her philandering father are beginning to shred, the fair comes to town, and Sally transfers these illusions to Tom, a handsome young man who works the rides. The relationship that develops between them involves both partners in a constricting web of deceit and thwarted desire. This is a well-crafted book, dealing frankly with the agonies arising from sexual attraction and the tension between the urges for freedom and security. My main reservation about the book is in its treatment of the fairground worker. Mr Jones writes a couple of token complexities into Tom's character, granting him a scant centimetre of depth, but in comparison with the detailed exegesis of the middle-class characters' emotions, he remains a barely examined item of proletarian rough trade.