Imogen Crimp

Anna in her first year of training at a prestigious London conservatory to be an opera singer. She's struggling financially, working in a jazz bar and renting a room in a truly dire house, but she loves her craft. Then she meets an older man and begins a casual relationship with him and her life spins out of control.

I love novels in which women destroy their own lives and this is a variation of that, although Anna is less self-destructive than simply an over-whelmed person who make an occasional bad, but understandable, decision that balloons into disaster. It's less watching someone burn down their own life than it is a reminder at how precarious life is for so many. Anna is hampered by having been raised by an anxious and over-protective mother and parents who do not support her, financially or emotionally. This is also a novel about the process of studying to become an opera singer, how competitive, repetitious and exciting that world is and how hard it is for someone without outside support and resources to make a go of it, regardless of talent. This is a well-written book that I enjoyed enormously.… (meer)