Girls will be girls
You'll have noticed them on the roads, minibuses, full of schoolgirls, being driven by harassed teachers to some country location where the girls will be put through end-of-term, healthy outdoor activities, protesting all the way. Among any group of eight 13-year-olds there'll be a victim, a loner, a leader, and so on - it's been the stuff of many a novel since Lord of the Flies, but it is Bella Bathurst's considerable achievement to bring to this scenario something contemporary and fresh. Right from the beginning, there is a ferocious undertone to this story. Anyone familiar with modern teenage girls will recognise the authenticity of the dialogue - brutal, vulgar, full of jeers and sneers understood only by themselves.