Confidence

Kerenza Penhaligon is a struggling actress: once fêted as a future star she is now reduce to taking embarrassing bit parts in TV dramas and standing in for other, more successful actors at read-throughs. Wondering where her career has gone, unable to pay her rent, and with her self-confidence flagging, she struggles to keep sight of the boundary between right and wrong. When she steps in to break up a violent confrontation in a bar, Kerenza finds herself caught up in a twilight world of con men and cheats, of dubious moral choices and temptingly high rewards. She meets the enigmatic Evan, who offers her a different avenue for her skills – in which her acting talent ends up proving far more useful off the stage than on it. Confidence is a funny, moving, brilliantly observed novel about surviving in 21st-century Britain, which asks not just whether it is possible to do the right thing, but also whether it’s even worth trying to.