A joyful 40th anniversary edition of a coming-of-age classic.

"There are few modern stories about first love and its disappointments that are as fully realized, as brilliantly outrageous, and as hilariously satisfying for men and women of all ages as this one." - Rachel Cusk

Eighteen-year-old Katherine - smart, stylish, frustrated in suburbia - has no idea how her life will change when the brilliant Jacob Goldman offers her a place at university for the first time. As she enters the sprawling, bohemian home of the Goldmans, presided over by the blissful matriarch Jane, she realizes that Jacob and his family are everything she has been waiting for.

But when a romantic entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced to go into exile from the family she loves the most. And her return to the circle after more than a decade will hold all sorts of wonderful surprises...

"The perfect book." - Meg Mason

"The best company in this difficult world." - Ann Patchett

"A daisy bomb of joy." - Maria Semple

"Funny, charming, full of life, and real." - Nick Hornby

"I loved it. It reminds me of classics like The Constant Nymph with its true voice and the wonderfully wise and optimistic heroine." - Sophie Dahl

"One of those books that, when people have read it, they just silently press it into your hands: 'You have to read this book, you will love it. There is no other book I love more.'" - Caroline O'Donoghue, Sentimental Garbage

"Rereading it is as comforting as eating toast and Marmite between clean, fresh sheets." - Rachel Cooke, Sunday Times

"Imagine Brideshead Revisited in the 1970s, only sexier and much funnier. It kills me that I didn't read it at university when I really needed it." - Meg Rosoff, New Statesman.