“Middle-class problems” are  currently trending on Twitter, with tales of lattes containing too much foam, shops running out of quinoa and unsatisfactory skiing holidays. A bit unfair, probably, but it kept coming to mind as I read Samantha Harvey’s third novel. Harvey’s writing is clever and thoughtful, filled with striking insights and wisdom. I imagine she takes the philosophical position that nothing human is banal if examined thoroughly enough, but her narrator does make rather heavy weather of things. An unnamed narrator begins to write passionately to Nina, her former close friend, years after the events that drove them apart. There is something she needs to get off her chest. Slowly, her letter reveals what happened when Nina, a free spirit, came to li