Jill

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.