Book description
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013 and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2014
'I adored Almost English' Nigella Lawson
'I read and ADORED Almost English . . . And now I will read everything she's ever written' Marian Keyes
Home is a foreign country: they do things differently…
Why read it?
1 author picked Almost English as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Marina is another scholarship girl (there’s a theme here) trying to escape her messy family life, but from the get-go, she feels like an outsider at her new boarding school, Coombe Abbey. At this school, everyone’s given a cruel nickname, but even worse is being so invisible you don’t have a nickname at all. Marina doesn’t cope well at all, and one of my favourite hilarious episodes is when she visits the beautiful, drafty, impossibly cool home of her boyfriend and has mortifying sex and a terrifying night-time poo. The ending had me in tears (but from laughter and sadness).
From F.J.'s list on The best nostalgic fiction set in UK and US boarding schools.
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