This is a family novel, and like almost all families these days this one is full of foundlings and misfits, but they cohere in their own fine way. The Llewellyns are a family who happen to run a legendary recording studio on the Welsh border that is also a working farm. So, it's also a rock'n'roll novel (as the Marc Bolan theft of the title promises). It's a countryside novel. It's a novel about stardom. It's a novel about the past walking hand-in-hand with the present. Being Welsh, it's just the right side of sentimental. It's terrific fun, full of incidental wit, and its principal characters are all lovely: the witchy Welsh nan, the cockney midget nan, the orphan she adopts, the boy with stardom in his veins, the sister-who-isn't-a-sister doomed to love him, the Bowie-obsessed brother under whose vast, sparkling skirts everyone shelters etc etc. Yes, it's a bit vaudeville (there's a streak of gypsy in it), yes, it lobs cliches like coconuts at its characters, but they dodge them, remaining at all times quick-witted, even metal-tongued, living people about whom you care, deeply.
