The characters are marvellous, they are so real, you can smell them, I’d say that if you don’t find yourself, or at least part of yourself, among them, you don’t exist. The story, told in a series of mental flashes from the characters (and some of them are flashes indeed) is of the last three days of the last term in a country high school.

Perhaps you need to live in a country town, as I do, to fully savour the book and some its low jokes. The people who make up a country high school are all here. Sally Morrison takes you past their thoughts and into their hearts so that you understand the appalling frustrations that life imposes on them. At the same time she manages to show the current of joy which flows through life, even in its blackest moments.

The author’s wit is reminiscent of Nabokov at his best: one of the teachers, Maxine Crutchly musing about a schoolgirl, ‘seventeen and sizzling like a chop’.

She is also a poet: Alice Morgan, a schoolgirl describing the laugh of the music teacher, ‘She giggles like a squeezed nightingale – tereu, tereu, jug-jug, the tawny throated.’

The action goes along at a cracking pace, but Ms (Dr?) Morrison doesn’t lose control of the plot or the characters for a second. In fact, I’m agog at her skill. She switches from sexy limericks to floating lyrical prose without missing a beat. Please, Ms  (Dr?) Morrison, don’t go overseas and make a million.

And now a word for the publisher. The book has an attractive sea-blue cover featuring a photograph by Robert Rooney of School-fence graffiti. The text is well set out in attractive print. The paper is of good quality so that the book is pleasant to handle as well as read.