Linda Grant’s new novel is an intriguing and evocative mix of a campus novel and mystery, stretched across the decades. Adele’s memories of her days at university in the 1970s are dominated by the sad death of her friend, Evie, an enigmatic and delicate young woman – a gleaming, appealingly androgynous figure, if also clearly unwell – who left a mark on her and her friends, both in life and in legacy.

Grant writes with grace, wit and the faintest edge of cynicism about the people her characters were in the 1970s, the people they were trying to be and the people they eventually become. It’s done with a lightness of touch, a sense of wry humour, but the book is also populated with the small and large losses of growing older. It’s the interplay between the heady then and a more grounded now that’s most affective, with Evie’s story part of the far greater weight of the past.

Upstairs at the Party is published by Virago, £8.99. Click here to order it for £6.99