The Lessons

by Naomi Alderman

In The Lessons a close-knit group of friends forms at Oxford around the mercurial, charismatic figure of Mark, whose rackety trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and dangerously unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous. After graduation the group fragments, each locked in his or her own suddenly adult, pedestrian world. But Mark's influence is still strong…

Naomi Alderman was born in 1974 and was brought up in the Orthodox Jewish community in Hendon, London, where she now lives. She is a graduate of the UEA creative writing course and has published short fiction in a number of anthologies.

A cosy, chic and old-fashioned atmosphere and a very good psychological analysis of her characters. Behind the characters' smooth mask of a face, lurks a hidden perversity.