Meena wants to be normal, she wants fishfingers and miniskirts and Jackie magazine. She yearns to be popular like her idol, Anita - local tough girl and mouthy gangleader. This proves to be somewhat difficult, though, as Meena is the only child of the only asian family in Tollington.

Anita And Me is a hugely entertaining, moving account of growing pains we can all relate to. Syal manages to grasp something of the strangeness and violence of childhood, at a time of great change. She brings back memories of Zoom lollies and space-hoppers, bags of sticky sweets that lock your jaws together and most of all the longing to fit in and be one of the gang.

I love the way she describes things - you can see everything immediately in your mind, as if you had lived in that town all your life and known every single one of it's inhabitants. I felt it was a little slow and jumped around a bit too much at times, but generally this is a great book to make you smile and remember and empathise deeply.