The setting is a dirty Blakean London, in the new millennium, where bicycles that cannot be unchained are bent and broken instead. Our ingénue, Jas, an Australian expatriate, tries to make her way as a French translator in the world of publishing. It’s a struggle. Jas’s literary antecedents may be traced back to Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career. At the turn of the last century, Sybylla Melvyn was sure of one thing: she wanted her freedom. To the eternal frustration of Franklin’s readers, Sybylla rejected the inestimably eligible Harold Beecham, even though he offered her a cartload of writing equipment, in preference for a life of penurious independence. Throughout the twentieth century, the literary tradition of the female quest for happiness beyond the constraints of colonial boundaries persisted. In Christina Stead’s For Love Alone, Teresa Hawkins embarks on a gruelling love affair in London. She is followed by Caro Bell in Shirley Hazzard’s Transit of Venus, Zoe Delighty in Stephanie Dowrick’s Running Backwards over Sand, and Lark Watter in Glenda Adams’s Dancing on Coral. Dancing or running, courageous young women must symbolically break their parochial chains in order to pursue the quest.