Pamela Hansford Johnson is an expert at lulling her reader into a cosy sense of security, and then rudely shocking him out of it. Sections of A Bonfire are pure domestic idyll, and one could imagine finding them in women's magazine stories of the period between 1924 and 1937, in which this novel is set.

Emma, the heroine, grows up doing and feeling all the things one expects from a girl in that safe, middle-class world: she loves Rochester in Jane Eyre and hates brussell sprouts, she goes to parties where well-behaved young men make remarks like, 'This is a boopsy tune eh?', and she marries a man who is almost too good to be true.

Placed in the background of this blissful world are certain undercutting details that hint towards the introduction of a less idyllic tone. Hitler is rising in Germany, the family parrot indulges in some...