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  • Published: 1 November 2002
  • ISBN: 9780099428329
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $26.99

Pop



A brilliant first novel set in the 1970s, from an Orange Prize longlisted author.

During the heatwave of 1975, Maggie, thirteen, goes to live with her grandfather, Pop, in Sutton Coldfield. Pop's mission is to know everything: the annual Fox and Dogs pub quiz is looming. Maggie doesn't know everything, but she does know about the great comedians - Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Eric and Ernie - about country music, Shirley Bassie, and about how her mother died.

Pop sings with the poetry of the suburbs and aches with the poignancy of adolescence. Kitty Aldridge has a wonderfully distinctive voice and a deliciously sharp eye for the extraordinariness of ordinary lives.

  • Published: 1 November 2002
  • ISBN: 9780099428329
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $26.99

About the author

Kitty Aldridge

Kitty Aldridge was born in the Middle East but grew up in England. A graduate of the Drama Centre, London, she has since worked in theatre, film, and television as an actress and writer. Her first novel, Pop (Cape, 2001), was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002 and shortlisted for the Pendleton May First Novel Award 2002. Her second novel, Cryers Hill, was published by Cape in 2007. Her short story, Arrivederci Les, won the Bridport Short Story Prize 2011 (Bridport Prize Anthology 2011).

Also by Kitty Aldridge

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Praise for Pop

Pop is an unforgettable creation... By some distance the most eloquent first novel I have read this century...If literary London can lionise Zadie Smith, it should pay Kitty Aldridge the same compliment. She has star quality

Sunday Telegraph

An authentic, gentle and genuinely funny account of ordinary life... This novel is at once life-affirming and important

Independent on Sunday

Aldridge combines rich, poetic prose with an impressively light touch

Guardian

A moving story, told with wit and invention, and the language shimmers in the heat-haze of sadness and loss. A truly original first novel

Daily Mail

Kitty Aldridge is a real discovery, a writer of precision, delicacy and wit, and her first novel is a rare delight

Salman Rushdie