When you're a teenager in seventies Stoke living on Smash and Cup-a-Soup, there's only one thing you long to acquire: Taste.
At least you do if you're Stephen Beckett, and you're convinced you were born into the wrong class.
So when middle age nears and you're running your own trendy Brighton eatery, you're entitled to think you've made it.
But you're about to find out just how expensive taste can be.
It can cost you:
Your wife and children
Your friends and family
Your sex drive, your business and probably your sanity
Caught in the headlights of a terrifying new life and an unhealthy fixation with a lapdancer who hates him, Stephen must face the question: is class really about what's on your plate? And if not, what are its true ingredients?
To discover where he belongs - and who with - Stephen Beckett is going to have to swallow a lot of things far less palatable than a plate of borsch.
And that's just for starters...
Sam O'Reilly is in her late 30's and is a freelance journalist and writer. She's a former Cosmopolitan magazine news journalist of the year and a runner-up for both the Cosmopolitan short story prize and the Ian St James Award. She freelances for magazines and newspapers including the Sunday Times, Guardian and Evening Standard. She lives in Brighton.