More of a novella, really, this is a fantastic little book set in an unspecified future earth. Our hero is the teenage Uncumber who is an "Insider", a member of the thinking class. She has never been outside - noone she knows ever has - she meets others through holovision and all of her experiences are provided by pills (which dictate her moods and feelings) and holovisual images which are her social life and even her holidays.

Like all the best heroes, she is a rebel. She longs to experience the "real world" but her forays "outside" are just too frightening. So her teenage angst plays out in the increasingly clastrophobic confines of her nuclear family. Until, of course, she falls in love and (in search of her "outsider") she decides to have an adventure.

Frayn has taken a simple idea and made it all-too-real and frighteningly possible. His society has developed as a result of increasing governmental control over hard-to-control society (sounds familiar?). People feared Big Brother, and their total loss of freedom. "But what in fact happened was exactly the opposite. Everything became private. People recognised the corruption of indiscriminate human contact. Whoever could afford it built a wall around himself and his family to keep out society and its demands." Scary stuff.

There is a lot going on in this short book and it grips and entertains in equal measure. Recommended.