A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp

 

Anna is twenty-four and wants to be an opera singer.  She was shocked when she was accepted to the London conservatory she applied for on a scholarship as she never expected it would happen.  She moves to London much to her parents' dismay but they aren't able to help her with money.  She must scrimp and save and take side jobs when they appear.  Then she meets Max.

Max is in his mid-thirties, rich and successful and everything Anna had dreamed of.  He is an investment banker and has a huge apartment on the seventeenth floor of a glass skyscraper.  Max is in the process of getting a divorce and the two agree to keep it casual, keep it light.

But soon Anna finds that is impossible to do.  She finds herself skipping classes and rehearsals if Max has a free evening.  She listens as he questions if this is the life she really wants, one of constant competition and auditions, one that pays little unless you are at the very top of the profession.  She even lets Max give her money when he sees how she is struggling to even eat some weeks.  Anna finds that her dreams seem to be shifting from the career she has always held first to being whatever Max wants her to be.  Which dream will win

This is Crimp's debut novel and she takes much from her own life.  After getting a degree from Cambridge in English, she spent several years trying to be an opera singer, although it was clear to her from the start that she was ill-suited for it.  She describes the atmosphere of a conservatory clearly, the comradery, the competition, the constant anxiety and fear of failure and the joy when something goes well and it seems that one might yet reach their dreams.  She also captures the experience of a young girl dating a man who is soon overpowering.  She explores how slowly one starts to accommodate the man's schedule, his desires, his need to remain free even if one is head over heels in love with him.  Accepting someone else's thoughts about one's dreams is a formula for failure but the balancing act between one's dreams and one's desire for love is a tricky one, one that many women wake up in middle age to regret which end of the balance they have ended up with. I listened to this novel and the narrator with her English accent transports the reader to the London Anna is trying to conquer.   The reader will emphasize with Anna but may not like Max.  This book is recommended for readers of literary and women's fiction.