Imogen Crimp on A Very Nice Girl: A Novel: Fiction

Imogen Crimp studied English at Cambridge and earned an M.A. in contemporary literature from University College London, where she specialized in female modernist writers. After university, she briefly studied singing at a London conservatory. Anna, the central character in her debut A Very Nice Girl: A Novel (Henry Holt and Co.), doesn’t fit in. Not with her wealthy classmates at the London Conservatory where she unexpectedly wins a place after university, not with the family she left behind, and definitely not with Max, a man she meets in the bar where she sings for cash. He’s everything she’s not – rich, tailored to precision, impossible to read – and soon, Anna is hooked, desperate to hold his attention and determined to ignore the warning signs that this might be a toxic relationship. As Anna shuttles from grueling rehearsals to brutal auditions, she finds herself torn between two conflicting desires: the drive to nurture her fledgling singing career and the longing for human connection. But her infatuation with Max starts to turn her away from the former. The roles she’s playing – both on stage and off – begin to feel all-consuming, and she risks losing sight of herself completely.