Gripless

Belinda is intelligent, lives with her boyfriend and has just begun her dream job as a teacher of creative writing at the exclusive private school, Beasdale. Tony, although gorgeous, has no social skills, has a tendency towards schizophrenic behaviour and has only just scraped a place on the school's Summer Theatre Course. It's an unlikely basis for a stomach-churning love affair, but as Belinda is at pains to point out, when someone has The Glow, you follow them to the ends of the earth. Her determination to make Tony hers knows no bounds and she devises many a hairbrained scheme to make things go her way, including toying with the affections of an even younger pupil. It is unbecoming behaviour for a school teacher but, as it turns out, she's not the only one half crazed with love. Blackmail, murder, anorexic philosophers and closet homosexual lust soon take centre stage, despite the common consensus that the play must go on. As you might have guessed, this is not the most serious of literary endeavours. But it is considerably better than most giggly girly chatterings on the subject of love and other distractions. Belinda's sharp and sassy voice is scathingly entertaining, and if the book occasionally degenerates into farce, it is all the more fun for doing so. --Claire Allfree


Genre: General Fiction