Starting in the 1970s, Linda Grant’s novel charts the life of Adele through her days at a new university to her enforced redundancy from her magazine editor’s role in the mid-2010, The main focus is on Adele’s time at university when she, along with her new friends were discovering who they wanted to be and how they hoped to change society for the better. Like many of her friends at university, Adele finds that the experience changes her life. The greatest effect upon Adele, was her friendship with Evie, a relationship that influenced much of her life and actions as she continues to try to understand what happened and why. Grant shows a deep affection and sympathy for her characters with their freedom to choose at university, which later becomes more restricted as they subsequently follow careers that at times bear little relationship to their studies. This makes for an evocative, spirited, engaging and moving portrait of the time and how young hopes change.

This book was OK, but only OK. I read through to the finish but if I'd lost the book part-way though I wouldn't have bothered to get another copy and keep reading. The characters are about my generation, so there was some interest there because of a certain amount of common experience. Maybe it's because I'm male that I didn't engage fully with this story. It is mostly focused on women, one Jewish woman in particular. I'm not that.. I don't think it's all my fault, however, the author has to take some responsibility. I don't think Grant demonstrates for us why the main character behaved the way she did. I certainly didn't understand, anyway. ( )

My favourite things about this book were the writing, the setting and the main character's point of view. The writing was generally good, with occasional stunning parts -- particularly a few analogies. The 1970's experimental university setting and the characters generated in the setting were very clever. These factors explain my four star rating. The actual story -- the mystery surrounding's Evie's death and the impact it had on the main character's life -- was my least favourite part of the book. The plot seemed unnecessarily melodramatic and took away from the strength of the writing, characters and setting. Still, I am now curious to hunt down some of Linda Grant's other books. ( )

I have always enjoyed reading novels about university life, and this is an especially good one. It follows the characters far beyond their time as students who meet during their first year at a university in Yorkshire (I think it is actually meant to be York itself) in the early 1970s.

The novel is narrated by Adele Ginsberg who, despite flunking her A Levels, had more or less blagged her way to university on the basis of a poem with which she had won a competition while still a schoolgirl back home in Liverpool. After winning the prize she sent a copy of the poem to beatnik guru, Allan Ginsberg (of 'Howl' fame) hinting at a family link between them. Ginsberg politely responded, maintaining the fiction that they were related. Adele uses the correspondence to secure a place at the new experimental university where liberalism holds sway and regulation is an alien concept.

Adele is already no stranger to tragedy and loss. A few years previously her father, whom she idolised, had committed suicide while on remand awaiting trial for fraud, having been running a low grade Ponzi scheme. University, though, seems a revelation and she quickly makes friends with Dora, a committed feminist, Rose, an ardent Communist and Gillian, a particularly nice girl redolent with bourgeois values. She also encounters the androgynous couple Evie and Stevie. They go everywhere together, and dress almost identically. As their first year passes the personalities of the various characters become more clear, though the greatest change occurs to Gillian. Having initially idolised Adele for her forthright lack of convention she falls under the sway of Rose and becomes deeply involved in far left politics around the campus. At her first lecture Adele meets and befriends Bobby, an openly gay and exuberant fellow student, whom she inducts into her group.

The party of the title is for Adele's birthday, and the tragic conclusion to the night of celebrations proves to be the scene of the defining moment of the story, though Grant deftly keeps us waiting for the eventual denouement. She also captures the different periods marvellously as she tracks the various students' subsequent careers. All in all a very entertaining book, and I shall definitely be looking for more by her. ( )