Zeph

'Our young eponymous heroine, Zepherine Pollack has always considered it her destiny to be a writer, and in the first sentence of the book announces her intention to become ''the unintelligent woman's Iris Murdoch''. ''Inspiration'', she decides, ''is divine intervention and I've been chosen to be intervened''.' Sunday Times

'Barker depicts Zeph's literary pretensions and plagiarism in a dazzling collage of pastiche and self-mockery, parodying a range of English literary styles from Tennyson to Booker-derived poetic-prose posturing. But it is her own gift for word-play, nuance and subtle exposition of the unstated that gives the novel its unique texture.' Times Literary Supplement