A coming-of-age classic by the 'best-loved English poet of the past 100 years. (Sunday Times) published to celebrate Larkin's centenary.
But when he invents an imaginary sister to win the attention of a rich but unreliable 'friend', and then falls in love for real, undergraduate life becomes its own strange world .
'Absolutely contemporary - perhaps even prophetic.' Joyce Carol Oates
'Remarkable .
Michaelmas term, 1940. 18-year-old John Kemp has come down from Lancashire to Oxford University to begin his scholarship studying English. But when he invents an imaginary sister to win the attention of a rich but unreliable 'friend', and then falls in love for real, undergraduate life becomes its own strange world .
'Absolutely contemporary - perhaps even prophetic.' Joyce Carol Oates
'Remarkable . A book about innocence.' Simon Garfield
'A cryptic literary manifesto [about] discovering a literary personality, and the consolation art can provide.' Andrew Motion
"'The qualities one has learned to value in his poetry are there: control of emotion and language, keen observation, and in particular the very precise expression of half-success, anticipated failure or sadness.' New Statesman; 'Jill is, in a sense, a kind of cryptic literary manifesto. It is a novel about writing, about discovering a literary personality, and about the sorts of consolation that art can provide.' Andrew Motion"
ISBN: 9780571225828
Dimensions: 123mm x 17mm x 17mm
Weight: 205g
256 pages
Main - Re-issue