***About the Author *** Name: Scarlett Thomas Born in the year: 1972 Born in : London Scarlett has been included in the top 20 female writers in the year 2001.She has also won an Elle Style Award for her novel 'Going Out'. When she was younger she spent a lot of time demonstrating against things such as Poll Tax and the first Gulf War. *** Bright Young Things *** When the 'Media Guardian' prints a mysterious job advertisement stating 'Bright Young Things wanted for Big Project', six twenty-somethings decide that they could do with a new challenge. Their lives are going nowhere; they're either ...  Read the complete review

Six 20-somethings, all just out of college and in dead-end jobs, or not in jobs at all, are going nowhere. Life is a drag, and they're dying for anything to happen. In the summer of 1999 they are the lucky, or perhaps unlucky, chosen from about two thousand who chance upon an ad in 'Media Guardian', looking for 'bright young things wanted for big project', and answer with a SAE to a box number in Edinburgh. Let's meet them. There's Anne, Jamie, Thea, Bryn, Emily and Paul. One is a care assistant in an old people's home, another is a graduate earning good money as an escort (and doing everything that goes with it ...  Read the complete review

Stumbling on this little beauty of a book was really a stroke of serendipity. Serendipity is happy chance, for anyone that didn’t know. An old letch I used to work with, who was of a literary bent, explained to me that his earliest taste of serendipity was shinning up a lamppost as a boy and having a surprise first orgasm. A likely tale, but it illustrates serendipity amusingly well. I wonder if he fell off – never thought to ask at the time. Anyway, I was darting around the library in a flummox, when I saw a large paperback book with a bright blue cover and big yellow, red and blue words on it. So I grabbed it and fled. Had I taken time to look at ...  Read the complete review