Chris Brookmyre

She's never met a creature like this.

She can't help but fall in love with him.

And we don't know if this is OK or not.

I was on the edge of my seat.

Yeah, and I feel she's fascinated by this greater possibility that he represents, but she's slightly afraid beyond that.

It's like there's the larger town that seems more glamorous than the tiny town that she's used to, and she has her eyes opened by simply visiting that, and he represents that.

But she's quite intimidated by the notion of

ever go to New York.

Almost like you can't ever see her doing that in the same way as perhaps part of her thinks he might be too much.

He might represent something like New York as well.

I think she's a very intelligent young woman.

Is she in love or not?

I think she's in passion.

I think she's in desire.

And summer is about that.

It's about this ripeness.

I think that one of the things that really surprised me was the modernity of it because normally novels I've read of that period would shy away, especially from female sexuality, but from confronting those desires and also the fact that this is a book published when it was and the description of abortion, for instance, is almost quotidian and the local attitude to it is not...

And particularly controversial.

It's seen as perhaps shameful, but not in the way we might anticipate.

I think it's also fair to say that the abortion, somebody who undertakes, you know, to have a termination, that is the end of their social life.