A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy - Tapa blanda

This is one of those rare novels that manages to be sparkling and funny as well as intelligently thoughtful. A young woman coming of age is trying to expand her mind and live inside her body both at once: her difficulties are imagined with comedy and delicate sympathetic insight. (Tessa Hadley)

Intelligently written and engaging, A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy brilliantly evokes 1970s university culture, with descriptions of Brighton so vivid that you can almost taste her every sea-air-laden breath. (Scarlet)

A funny, provocative coming of age novel. (Sainsbury's Magazine)

This is a solid, enjoyable debut... memorable and engaging. (New Statesman)

A tender portrait of a feisty little girl lost... honest and intelligent... funny and poignant. (Observer)

Marvellous fun. (The Sunday Tribune 2008-07-06)

[A] closely observed account of a female student's coming of age...this is genuinely moving, catching precisely the era's claustrophobia. (Olivia Laing Observer 2008-12-07)

Juxtaposing such heavyweight thinkers with such apparently slight modern-day quandaries is a brave thing to attempt. In this enjoyable debut, Greig pulls it off with tenderness, subtlety and humour. (Alexandra Masters Observer 2009-07-12)

Susannah Jones' official boyfriend Jason is the perfect foil to her student lifestyle. He is ten years older and an antique dealer, so she doesn't have to live in the seedy digs her friends do. Then when she is on campus she can take philosophy very seriously and dabble in the social and sexual freedom of 1970s Sussex University. In fact, it was philosophy that led her to the sex: Rob, with whom she is having an affair, is her tutorial partner. Then she discovers things are even more complicated than she thought and, forced to look beyond her friends and lovers for support, finds help from Kierkegaard and other European philosophers. The Women's Room meets Friedrich Nietzsche in this bittersweet coming of age novel, in which love is far from platonic and the mind-body problem a pressing reality.