Liz Allan’s 1990s-set novel smells like teen spirit

The Bastards aren’t afraid of anything – until one of their members is “snatched”. In Liz Allan’s In Bloom, this group of four fatherless 15-year-old girls do everything together: skateboard through their rundown coastal town of Vincent in 1990s Australia; drink and swim at the beach; sit outside Ernie’s record store in the rain. They also rehearse their Nirvana-esque rock group for an upcoming battle of the bands competition, inspired by their icon Kurt Cobain and their beloved music teacher, Mr P, one of the only adults in their orbit who seems to respect their intelligence. 

When the group’s ringleader, Lily Lucid, grows withdrawn, disappears from school, and stops turning up for band practice, the others – unnamed by Allan – feel baffled and betrayed. Mr P is suspended, and rumours circulate that he has abused her. The girls, aware that Lily has long been abused by her violent, alcoholic stepfather – they have all known bad stepfathers – are determined to prove Mr P’s innocence. They protest to other teachers and the police, and attempt to track Mr P down. “We practise our songs on the skate home, singing in harmony, over and over… For the first time, our voices are small with fear.”

Allan’s atmospheric and gripping book won her a place on The Observer’s debut novelists of 2026 list. It is written in an eerie, musical third-person plural, like the book’s most direct influence, Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides – if that novel had been narrated by the Lisbon sisters themselves. “Us Bastards have known each other since kindy, when our dads were still around and we did weekly food shops with a trolley instead of a basket. When we went road-tripping and ate fish and chips on Sundays and rode piggyback and went to barbecues at each other’s houses. Milkshake days, before the dads left and the money ran out. Days that are best not spoken about, except every now and then someone will say hey, remember that time?” 

In Bloom is divided into short, dynamic chapters that offer retrospective glimpses of the buildup to Lily’s absence, and the girls’ attempts to understand more about what happened to her. This carefully crafted structure, which makes Allan’s narrative both propulsive and intimate, is shattered in the book’s devastating final act. 

As the novel progresses, the myriad dangers of the girls’ environment grow increasingly stark – and the likelihood of escaping their circumstances grows ever slimmer. “If you want to know what happens to forgettable girls who stay in Vincent, just ask Kelly Cooper, or any of the other hollow-eyed girls dragging their feet behind a pram. Invisible girls with invisible children, moving quietly along the edges.” But the specialness and safety of their own bonds grow deeper, too. 

Allan, 43, loosely based the novel on her own experiences of growing up in Victor Harbor in South Australia, in a low-income, single-parent family; like Lily, Allan was abused by a partner of her mother’s, and bonded with a group of girls with absent fathers. The specificity of her observations brings a wonderful depth and atmosphere to her portrait of working-class life in a small town in the 1990s; to her depiction of the magic and intensity of friendships between teenage girls; and to her understanding of how patriarchal violence looms over vulnerable young women, from multiple angles. This is a powerful and evocative debut from a writer of great skill and deeply felt emotion.

In Bloom by Liz Allan is published by Sceptre (£16.99). Order a copy from The Observer Shop for £15.29 (10% off RRP). Delivery charges may apply

Photograph by