A Vision of Loveliness, By Louise Levene

Swinging London comes to life

This novel is not really about people. It's about an era: the late Fifties and early Sixties. It was a time of social transition in England, the point at which it was just possible (with a lot of effort, correct posture, elocution lessons, and the ability to order correctly from a menu) to move from one class to another, to "better yourself".

A Vision of Loveliness is the account of an incredible social climb. The story is simple enough: Jane is living with her ghastly aunt Doreen, who hates her, in a London suburb, Norbury, working as a shop-girl. An accidental find of a crocodile handbag in a Fitzrovia pub leads Jane to the glamorous Suzy, who grooms her for the next rungs of the ladder, with modelling and a flat in Belgravia.

No longer having to sort out cashmere jerseys into rainbow piles – "Nothing would ever be green again. Emerald. Peppermint. Apple. Bottle. Chartreuse. Jade. Lime. Loden. Viridian. Moss"– Jane becomes a model at a wholesalers in the West End, doing Paris turns. These scenes are some of the best in the book; and, as the daughter of a dressmaker, I can vouch for their authenticity. As Jane models dresses worn many times before by other pre-deodorant models, and feels "underarms so stiff and stale with sweat that they left scratches on her skin", you wince with her.

This book is so utterly compulsive not for the plot or the characters, who are all fairly unpleasant, but because of Louise Levene's quite astonishing visual memory. Every page, every paragraph, sucks one back into a period with intensity far greater than that experienced when one was actually there. There are the ceilings in buses "trembling with tarry, fat droplets of condensation" from the smokers; there are the tampons ("Doreen called these 'pessaries' and said only married women could use them but that wasn't what 'Sister' said on the leaflet inside the box"); there's the De-Fuzz It gadget sold with jerseys, and the pâté-like "dogmeat with a tiny tassel of gherkin on top".

There's virtually no sex, but there is an admirer. "Johnnie's profile was caught in the headlights. Like a drawing of a boyfriend." Indeed, this immensely readable book is so full of period atmosphere that reality actually pales when you put it down.