BEST BOOKS ON...

JANUARY is the month that truly sorts the one per cent from the hoi polloi. For many of us, it’s a period of grim reckonings: the scales that fall from your eyes as you weigh yourself for the first time since the Christmas party season; the credit card bill opened with panic; the tax bill paid with that sinking feeling.

Then there’s the elite. For them, January is a month for topping up their Vitamin D in the Caribbean.

If you are seeking some less costly distractions, then this is also when many of the year’s most anticipated debut novels are published.

Among them, American Kiley Reid’s Such A Fun Age is a whip-smart, keenly observed and thought-provoking examination of privilege, race and gender. In contemporary Philadelphia, young black graduate Emira is on a night out when her boss calls with a late-night childcare emergency. Needing the money, she says yes. An hour later, Emira is apprehended in a shop, accused of kidnapping her charge.

She has to call her boss’s husband Peter, (‘He’s an old white guy, so I’m sure everyone will feel better’) to extricate herself from the humiliating situation. The child’s mother, Alix, a feminist blogger, attempts to rectify the situation, but only inflames it.

What Red Was by Rosie Prince, begins with Oxford student Kate being woken by a handsome man, clad only in a towel, banging on her door. Soon, Kate and Max become companions. Theirs is never, however, a relationship of equals. For Kate to have reached an elite university is a gargantuan achievement. For Max — imbued with a confidence and polish only class and money can confer — it is an expectation. Kate’s entrée into his world has devastating consequences.

In Tara Isabella Burton’s Social Creature, hard-up wannabe writer, Louise, is summoned into the dazzlingly glamorous New York life of rich It-girl, Lavinia. But, like Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, Louise is wearied of being the poor outsider looking in. If your thrills need to come cheap in January, these will keep you riveted.