A very nice girl a novel

Summary: Anna knows she has talent, but she's always felt out of place in the world of opera. A first-year student at a prestigious London conservatoire, she lives in a grim series of rented rooms with her friend Laurie. Her days are devoted to highly competitive auditions and long, straining rehearsals. At night, she sings jazz in an expensive bar, relying on her popularity to make rent and stay afloat alongside her wealthy peers. It's there that Anna meets Max, a charismatic financier in the midst of a divorce who, at 38, is fourteen years Anna's senior. Reluctantly impressed by Max, his careful detachment, Anna soon finds herself desperate to hold his attention. As winter pervades the city, Anna begins a dangerous oscillation between hard-won moments on stage, and nightly stays at Max's glass-walled flat. But as Anna's fledgling career begins to demand her undivided attention, so too does Max, a situation that dangerously compounds until Anna must decide who, or what, she wants.

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