Grasshopper by Barbara Vine

AZ: "Blamed by her parents for the tragic death of a friend, Clodagh has been banished from their home in the countryside to a dingy basement flat in the city. Her life is transformed when she meets the inhabitants on the top floor of 15 Russia Road. An exotic range of young people who explore a London of roofs, eaves and ledges, thrilling in the freedom and danger. Clodagh, haunted still by the accident, finds that running the roofs brings her back to life, but it seems that tragedy and misfortune may not be done with her yet"

Very good but I thought overlong, I understand that Vine was trying to speak about the characters as much as the precipitating events but although the events (the death on a pylon of a childhood friend and the stabbing of another character) were interesting and the characters did linger in my head I thought it was too long. Like Vine's Brimstone Wedding which I have on tape I felt it was missing something.