The journalist’s debut novel about a London girl gang of the 1950s expertly toys with gender and explores young people’s place in the world

In Kelly Frost’s fast-paced debut novel, girls rule the streets. It’s 1957 in Finsbury Park, north London, and the boys that make up the Coshers gang are away on national service. In their place, the Seven Sisters are guarding their turf, but not without backlash from a neighbouring group of young women – the Kings – who aren’t happy watching a rival gang get their way.

The book opens with Tony in 2017, as she waits to meet her old mates in the pub that was once their meeting place. “Not long after the millennium, someone suggested we start these reunions – although there wasn’t much union left to re,” Frost writes, setting the book’s jocular tone. We learn that Tony escaped Finsbury Park for an international modelling career. What about the rest of them?