THE CLOTHES ON THEIR BACKS BY LINDA GRANT

*Books are timeless... this is a pre-loved copy

"My parents brought me up to be a mouse. Out of gratitude to England, which gave them refuge, they chose to be mice-people, and this condition of mouse-hood was what they hoped for me too. And whatever Uncle Sandor was, he was no mouse. He was a rhinoceros, coated in the mud of the river, goring and grabbing."

In a red-brick mansion block near the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then a glamorous uncle appears, in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sandor so violently unwelcome in her parents home? Vivien wants to know.

This is a story about survival - both everyday and heroic - and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live.

Set against the backdrop of 1970s London, The Clothes on Their Backs is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and how they define us all.