Twice winner of the Booker Prize, renowned for his gutsy, wiry prose: that’s Peter Carey. “He was born in Australia and lives in New York,” the jacket tells us – which seems significant. This is late, ex-pat Carey, engaging almost bashfully with the angst of post-colonial Anglo-Saxon guilt.

The book is set in the Fifties, when women kept their place and, in the case of feisty heroine Mrs Irene Bobbsey, gave their worthless husband an inheritance to spend on a whim.