For one achingly beautiful, golden-tinted summer, all is magical. The Trentham daughters, and Lily, watch from the sidelines as this tempestuous, romantic group of people argue, smoke, flirt and bring new urgency and determination into the old house.

Calling themselves the Melbourne Modern Art Group, the artists plan for their first exhibition. Lily is not the only addition to the Trenthams’ chaotic ménage. As the years pass, she watches the formation of an artists’ commune in the house as the mercurial Evan gathers like-minded painters together. Shrugging off her own unexciting home life, she craves to become part of the Trenthams’ vibrant lifestyle and, through her growing friendship with Eva, her wish seems to come true, until the rambling house and its large, half-wild garden are as familiar to her as her own. Used to the quiet life of an only child in a modest home, Lily is captivated by the Trenthams’ sprawling old house, where friends are always coming and going, where the children run wild and the adults have intense intellectual conversations over wine and cigarettes, talking deep into the night with a passion that fires Lily’s heart. Her fascination grows as she meets Eva’s family: her two sisters, practical, maternal Bea and little Heloise her mother, the cool, sophisticated and rather daunting Helena and her unkempt, flame-haired father, the painter Evan Trentham. On her first day at a new school in 1930, eight-year-old Lily makes friends with Eva, whose ebullience and confidence outstrip anything that shy Lily can muster. I am an only child it is my lot to be envious, even grasping, to long for the bonds that tie sisters together, the fearless, unthinking acceptance that we are social creatures, pack animals, that there is never, truly, the threat of being alone.

Byatt’s The Children’s Book and, like Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, it focuses on an intensely-rendered, many-layered picture of adolescent female friendship. There are hints of Brideshead Revisited, of The Secret History and The Lessons, of A.S. Romantic and poignant, it manages to feel much larger than its slim size would suggest. It brims with the ribald, feverish glamour of bohemian life, seen through the eyes of a narrator who grows to adulthood on the margins of an exotic world so very different from her own humdrum existence.

The Strays has enjoyed great success in its native Australia and it’s easy to see why.

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