In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sándor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home?
This is a novel about survival - both banal and heroic - and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live.
Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, The Clothes on Their Backs is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all.
- 'If you read only one novel this year, make sure it is THE CLOTHES ON THEIR BACKS SUNDAY EXPRESS
- 'Her heroine, Vivien Kovaks, slightly resembles a rawer, angrier version of one of Anita Brookner’s dutiful daughters . . . such is the richness of Grant’s plotting that the story encapsulates many untold narratives' THE TIMES
Paperback:
£7.99
Published 02/04/2009