Fashion victim

Darkly comic debut skewers privileged world of style mags.

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Caroline Palmer's debut novel - a doorstopper at almost 550 closely printed pages - is set in the competitive world of fashion magazine publishing in early-2000s New York. Palmer was the former editor of Vogue.​com so she knows this world, but there's little glamour here. That's despite endless descriptions of high-end designer stuff. Instead, Workhorse is a detailed account of the status anxiety and craven bootlicking of Clo, a lowly editorial assistant who would do anything to keep her American dream alive.

Clo leaves her comfortably off family and home town of Philadelphia to find work in New York. She has always seen magazines as "a window into an exciting future" and, using a false CV, lucks into a position at a Vogue-like magazine.