Nearly immediately, I was transported to places and people I think I know. Apartments swept, and tided with no clutter, shops with clothes racks and silent hosts, op-shops with the dusty, dank smell of mothballs, England with low grey skies – it’s all here, with characters so visual that I’m sure I’ve somehow met them. Grant is a self-described clothesaholic – and this novel describes the clothes of the characters in delicious detail, in order to define their heritage or their politics or their fear.

This is a story of the effects of war, of migration and of survival, centred on Vivien, the daughter of Hungarian migrants in London in the 1970s, and her search for a hidden family history. Vivien’s journey takes us back to the World War II and to the civil tension rising in London at that time. Grant writes with the skill of a confidante sharing innermost pleasures and dirty poignant truths. I read until, sadly, the story was finished – except for when I smell dust balls or see red fingernails...