The fifties were a difficult time to be a married woman and daughters in particular carried the burden of this unhappiness. Forbidden to socialise, Alice, the seventeen-year-old heroine of The Dress, defies her mother and escapes to a glamorous and glitzy party but is terrified she will be shamed, humiliated and dragged home. She thinks she has got away with it, then something unexpectedly dreadful happens.

This mesmerising and unforgettable novel describes what it was like to be young after the Second World War and the tensions in society as the more colourful Sixties begin to unfold.