If Holden Caulfield had been obsessed with film noir; if The Bell Jar had been set in inner city London and featured tinned mince; if Jean-Paul Sartre had been a wisecracking existentialist.......... The heroine of 21:45 has a unique voice - funny, dirty, irreverent, inventive, raw. You won't often encounter such a complex, compelling - yet slightly irritating - female. Her world is grimy and mundane, with unexpected flashes of beauty. At age 21 - in the throes of an existential crisis - she intends to commit suicide (wearing a vintage prom dress). Concerned about leaving no trace, she decides to write her memoirs. After a brief dash through her eccentric childhood, we see her discovering alcohol, shoplifting and sex. Disco and punk provide the soundtrack. One night, she meets the love of her celluloid life, Charlie - a Steve McQueen look alike and housebreaker extraordinaire. Age sixteen, she leaves school. Bored with her first job, she decides to go to college, but then discovers that Charlie has died in prison. Nothing is ever the same again. In an attempt to understand her 'fall', she buys a beret and reads Nausea. In her search for a 'reason to be' she: attempts to write a best seller; tries psychotherapy; advertises in a lonely hearts column; goes on a budget coach trip round Europe and gets to know the coach driver intimately. 21 ends with carefully arranged death bed mise en scene, complete with replica gun and still from Gilda. The best coming of age novels leave us wanting to know what happened next - 45 presents the reader with six possible scenarios. Is our middle aged heroine enjoying an idyllic afterlife, with a devoted Jake Gyllenhaal mowing the lawn in just his knickers. Or did she find her reason to be?