After clocking off at the hotel bar one night, Anna meets suave 38-year-old banker Max. He's extricating himself from his marriage and is attracted to Anna, his "dark-eyed bohemian" because while he has a glossy and moneyed lifestyle, his inner world is empty. Never wanting to be a banker despite staying in the profession for 15 years, he admires Anna's ability to work towards a career she is genuinely passionate about. He admits, "I'm sorry Anna. You're going to find in time I'm really not that interesting." And he isn't. He's cold, distant, unavailable - a husk. His idea of a sentimental Christmas gift for Anna is an expensive but generic gold bracelet with an "A" engraved on a charm. The parts of his world he allows Anna to access are limited to expensive dinners in nice restaurants and sex back at his glass-walled flat, which overlooks London. She's not allowed to his Oxfordshire country home or to meet his friends.
When Anna gives up her jazz singer gig, Max starts slipping her money. And this is where class and power dynamics come further into play. The problem with this novel is that the plot and characters are superficially rendered and, let's face it, the remote and unattainable handsome older man and eager-to-please younger woman trying to break into his non-existent inner world is such a well-mined narrative that it requires an attentive crafting of character and plot development for it to have interest or a point of difference. The characters lack depth and if the nuanced complexities of Anna and Max's entanglement were explored beyond a surface level, the novel would have sustained a better momentum.
However, Crimp's writing is evocative and what she has mastered here is excellent scene-building, beautifully and vividly evoking the buzz and rhythm of London with its beat and breath, always expanding while Anna stays the same. There's a strong sense too of every place Anna inhabits from her bleak flat, bars, practice rooms, her parent's stuffy home and Max's pristine but soulless apartment. A Very Nice Girl is an undemanding, easy read but I'm interested enough to read whatever Crimp writes next.
Reviewed by Kiran Dass
