Dan Rhodes was included in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list in 2003. His funny, misanthropic first novel, Timoleon Vieta Come Home, was ample justification for it. He also famously wrote Anthropology, a collection of 101 stories each 101 words long, which was a stylistic achievement if not of durable appeal; but he hasn’t really yet matched the heights of Timoleon Vieta. Gold is now his third novel (if you count The Little White Car, written under the name ‘Danuta da Rhodes’).

Gold’s main character is Miyuki Woodward, a young woman who takes annual two-week holidays in a small seaside town in Wales in a bizarre rite of separation from her long-term girlfriend, Grindl. Miyuki likes to ‘miss’ Grindl for two weeks so that for the rest of the year she will