Readers may best recognise Roberta Taylor through her successful career on British television, acting in popular soap operas East Enders and The Bill. Perhaps as a result, Taylor has imbued her debut novel, The Reinvention of Ivy Brown, with the sudsy plotlines and unmistakable British charm of the aforementioned shows.

Ivy Brown is bored with her menial desk job at the Wiserman Pulverising Factory, and longs for a more fulfilling existence with Arthur, a fellow employee she is having a secret affair with. Arthur, however, has set his sights on Janet, a young and impressionable filing clerk who has started work at the company in order to escape the clutches of her domineering family. As Ivy’s jealousy and Janet’s feelings for Arthur simultaneously intensify, disaster is inevitably in store.

Taylor does a good job of linking the repressed nature of the 1960s workforce with her female characters lack of agency in their professional and personal lives. But above all, what makes the novel an absorbing read is Taylor’s almost old-fashioned prose which is as homely as buttered crumpets and a warm cuppa.