Slipstream

Anyone who has ever been to a girls school, a boarding school or any institution where the emphasis has been as much on friendship as on education, will identify with at least one of the three main characters in Kate Bingham's new novel, Slipstream. Starting with a mysterious incident at a boarding school and then deploying an evocative flashback technique to explain what has happened, Bingham's second novel builds on the style demonstrated in her first, Mummy's Legs. Pretty, ferocious Nina; gawky romantic Lou (always in the shadow of a beautiful older sister) and pensive, sharp Beth take the reader on nostalgic trips carefully interwoven. The first romps through the terms at boarding school; the second down a secluded canal on a rusty boat, while the girls await their A-level results and their futures with idle speculation.

Despite the overall humour and light-hearted mood of this book, Kate Bingham is no light-weight writer. Her sentences are crafted with elegance and thoughtful provocation, as when Lou first reveals her scar to the other girls:

A scar is a memory preserved, a souvenir that clings to its own importance, rejecting the company of scrap-books, shells and ticket-stubs, the damp bank-holiday nostalgia of attic sales. It is the only part of you that will not thicken, harden, weaken or bruise.

Slipstream makes its indentation on the memory in a similar way. --Vanessa Curtis


Genre: General Fiction