Kavenna's first novel follows a travel book, The Ice Museum, which chronicled the search for the - possibly mythical - Land of Thule. A similar vagueness characterises Inglorious, which describes a few months in the life of a depressed, unemployed woman.

Rosa is 35, and working as an arts journalist when she is overwhelmed by a sense of the futility of everything. Her distress at the recent death of her mother, combined with a creeping sense of how little she has achieved, impels her to quit her job. A row with her boyfriend, Liam, ensues, which ends with Rosa moving out of their flat. Later she learns that Liam has been unfaithful to her with her best friend, Grace. There begins a period of uncertainty, in which Rosa, now homeless and rapidly running out of money, drifts from one friend to the next, exhausting the sympathy of each in turn.

Kavenna precisely captures the mixture of superiority and self-pity with which Rosa justifies her failure to act. Days pass in a dull blur of writing lists: “Clean the kitchen. Read the works of Proust...”, scrounging meals and brooding about death. It is all very funny, and very dark. Rosa's extreme solipsism does not prevent her from some sharp observations on the absurdities of modern life. Best of all are the descriptions of London, which comes across in all its seedy glory; although a comically disastrous visit to friends in the Lake District is also well worth the price of entry.

Inglorious by Joanna Kavenna
Faber, £7.99 Buy the book here

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