ABSOLUTELY & FOREVER
By Rose Tremain
Chatto & Windus
The torment of teenage love is the starting point of this sparkling gem of a novel. It’s the 1950s and posh schoolgirl Marianne is obsessed with floppy-haired Simon, who deflowers her in the back of his baby-blue Morris Minor one febrile evening.
Simon is meant to go to Oxford but when he fails his entrance exams he decides to decamp to Paris with lofty