Books about London are many and varied: great talents from Dickens to Peter Ackroyd have celebrated the smoke in all its glory and squalor. But Matthew d'Ancona's Going East is something else again--this is as multi-faceted a picture of the metropolis as one could wish for. D'Ancona holds in place two skilfully differentiated visions of the city, on either side of the class divide, each of which is a prism for the conflicted lives of its (equally vividly realised) protagonists.

Mia Taylor has enjoyed the benefits of being born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, but a catastrophic change in her fortunes has propelled her from her comfortable life to a much more spartan existence at an alternative health centre in the East End. Very swiftly, Mia realises that she has been seeing the merest fragment of life as it is lived in modern London, and her new existence throws her into contact with a wide range of new people--some of whom are friendly and life-enhancing, some of whom are very unsavoury indeed. And Mia's life is to change a second time--this time, irrevocably.

Although every note sounded in this picture of today's London demonstrates near perfect pitch, there's a pleasingly old-fashioned feel to the massive, heaving cast, conjured with Dickensian richness. The author's background as a journalist shines in the glowing panoply of observation that distinguishes his novel. But although all the very disparate characters are well drawn, it's the beautifully rounded picture of the luckless Mia, struggling to come to terms with her new life, that really marks Going East as a book of authority and insight. --Barry Forshaw

Genre: Thriller