The Unreliable Narrator is originally from Northamptonshire and has lived in Penarth for almost five years. They will be writing a book review for Penarth Nub News every Saturday, whether it's based on a treasure found in a second-hand book shop or a glossy hardback from Griffin Books.

"Observant but not observed." – Olivia Manning. This novel is pure comfort food. My copy, from 1984, has a grain to the page and an ambered, sun-burnt weighty hue. My favourite kind of reading. Publication date: 1969. Captured through the youthful eyes of an adolescent who, desperate to be a best friend to the prettiest girl in school, takes hero-worship and daydreaming to a familiar fever pitch, the novel reflects the setting, standing on the periphery of the swinging sixties, refracting back a worrying picture of the present time. There is something oddly consoling about the way a book speaks, 53 years later, to the violence still endemic in our lives. Laura, our main character, chafes against her mother's anxieties, her younger brother's purity and her father's emasculation. Looking to make her mark on the world, to live in London, to see beyond her seaside life, she is self-conscious and clutching at any compliment she can rest her head upon, with the off-hand comment of a passing lady, dubious at best ('if we had you in Paris, we'd make a cult out of you') being a constant refrain that she harps back to, never fulling knowing what was meant or understanding the nature of the deliverer, a troubling brush with adulthood

she is too young to fully grasp.

Laura navigates the painful in-between years, harbouring adolescent fantasies of a friendship with Vicky, which she believes she can orchestrate only when any competition for her affection has been removed for the summer break.

Laura, attempting to stage manage a kinship into existence, becomes Vicky's unwitting pawn, manipulated into what Vicky believes will be her own maturation, to devastating consequences.

Laura's belief that she can protect Vicky through sheer force of will is something that is familiar to us all, as is Vicky's naïve certainty that danger will not befall her, protected as she is by youth and a perfected exterior.

Laura may cast herself as the naïf but it is Vicky, the character held up as the epitome of sophistication and adult understanding, that is the most child-like, with Laura sensing a danger that, even if too inexperienced to name, Vicky flatly refuses to recognise.

Laura's longing to be see and to be seen is a universal theme. People often speak of female friendships, female obsessions, as if they are strictly a teenage thing.

As if, after the first blush of youth, women do not crave a mirrored other. As if the need to see yourself replicated, on and on, is a passing fad.

I do not agree. This book may pick apart the awkward teenage years, but it will resonate with anyone who has longed for a make belief to become a reality, without true reality treading upon their dreams.

And, in reality, who has never wanted that?

Click here to read The Unreliable Narrator's review of Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi