"Jane's struggle to cope is a journey of self-discovery and independence...a wistful and haunting period piece" (The Times)

"This was the first grown-up book I read apart from the dirty bits in The Carpet Baggers and every 14-year-old should be made to read it. It tackles the lot; loneliness, race, sex and growing up. I never read books twice but I feel like tracking this one down again." (Jenny Eclair Daily Express)

"Unflinching in its boarding-house detail, and strikingly modern in its fury at the "social conditioning" that made its heroine an outcast; it shocked and sold." (The Independent)

"Written in pre-Pill days when motherhood really was a fate worse than death, the shame and tension in Reid Bank's ground-breaking novel may seem incomprehensible to today's sexually active youngsters" (Val Hennessy Daily Mail)