There's a strong sense that though ostensibly fiction, the novel is informed by real experiences, and the verisimilitude adds weight to the drama within and beyond the classroom. Laurinda too offers insight into growing up in socio-economically depressed circumstances, a situation that creates intense pressure on the children of refugees to succeed academically in order to bypass or surpass their humble station. Pung expands on topics she has touched on in her bestselling memoir, Unpolished Gem. When Lucy is allowed access to their circle, and treated like a pet project, she is understandably wary of their ulterior motivations.

A member of the Cabinet, for instance, is 'prone to say snide things every seven minutes or so, as if she had bitch Tourette's'.

Pung does an excellent job at portraying the insidious bullying among teenagers, at teasing out the 'mean girl' pranks that are more malevolent than mischievous. Laurinda is indeed a pitiless world where 'nothing has a stronger hold over a girl than the fear of the thoughts of her peers'. As the inaugural recipient of the Equal Access Scholarship, set up apparently 'to go to kids with parents the school considered povvo', Lucy is keenly aware of being of mongrel stock among the thoroughbreds. It's a novel about the outsider trying to negotiate the tricky, unspoken rules dictated by the popular kids, a task fraught with the risk of public humiliation at every potential misstep. Into this suffocating hothouse environment drops Lucy Lam, a scholarship girl of Chinese descent who finds herself beset with anxiety after struggling with cultural clashes of race and class. The golden trio (Chelsea, Brodie and Amber) are the chosen ones who burnish brightly due to their privileged background and academic smarts but who also delight in lording it over their long-suffering classmates and teachers.

The school evolved to become one of the oldest ladies' colleges in the state, but the term 'Cabinet' stuck, and now, in its latest incarnation, is bestowed on an unholy trinity of 15-year-old girls. Those who weren't duly chosen were left to languish at the back of the shelf. In Alice Pung's first novel, the (fictional) Laurinda is described as a finishing school where, upon graduation, the young women were said to be 'in the Cabinet', a favoured position where their charms could best be displayed to attract the attention of prospective bachelors.

Life story: Laurinda expands on topics the author has touched on in her bestselling memoir, Unpolished Gem.

Laurinda by alice pung