Notes from Utopia

Utopia Holmes has escaped to New York. Abandoning London's dirty grey skies and the grief of her mother's death, she's come in search of clues to the past - and adventure.

The city offers her everything she dreamed of and more. It's a midsummer madness of people and places, heat and noise. She throws herself into an affair with a downtown artist who lives in a warehouse and makes sculpture from scrap. His party trick is to teach Utopia how to get high.

What she really wants, though, is a job on one of New York's glossy magazines, where girls with matching faces do therapy at lunch and define the word perfection. It's a tough act to get in on. And is it the solution? The Big Apple holds as many questions as answers and Utopia's roller-coaster ride manages to take her to places never imagined. It's a once-in-a-lifetime journey.