Personality

Andrew O''Hagan''s second novel, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, is a powerful tale about society, celebrity and self-destruction.

Maria Tambini is a thirteen-year-old girl with a great singing voice. Growing up on a small Scottish island, she is ready for the big time and keen to escape her ordinary life. When she wins a national TV talent show, she becomes an instant star, yet all the time ''the girl with the giant voice'' is losing herself in fame and in a private battle with her own body. Can Maria be saved by love or is she destined to be consumed by celebrity, by family secrets, and by her number-one fan?

''Enormously impressive, frequently curious and consistently ambitious.'' Sunday Times

''What he manages brilliantly is allowing us only restricted access to Maria''s mind, so that the reader is put in something like the same relation to her as the sharkish agents and managers who suck her dry.'' Guardian

''Such command, such grace, and such compassion.'' New York Review of Books