This is a post I have been meaning to write for a while, ever since this book arrived on my front doorstep, courtesy of Abebooks and Mad Hatter books in New Zealand: a first edition of the novel Andra by Louise Lawrence, complete with its splendid seventies cover. It was the book that made the whole character-plot interaction thing go click for me, when I read it at the age of fourteen. A fiery teenaged girl leads a youth revolt against the precepts of a dystopian underground society, discovers an unexpected ally and visionary in its leader, and is betrayed by one of her own followers. There is a point in the book where one of the characters says, in essence, all this happened because she was Andra. And as I read that, slouched sideways in an armchair on a winter Saturday afternoon, the connection between plot and character was made for me and I moved to another level in my writing. Thank you, Louise Lawrence.