An ever-decreasing circle of fashion, sport and politics references.
Her younger, chatterbox sister Dorothy is wise beyond her years about sports, pop culture, literature, music and politics, references to which pack and uplift the book.
"People can see the danger of partisan, poison politics," a reference to the relentless political assault against her.
European Parliament President Martin Schulz referred to the changes as a "dangerous Putinisation of European politics" - a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The defence industries minister, Christopher Pyne, accused Xenophon of engaging in a "tin-foil hat kind of politics" – a reference to conspiracy theorists – and damaging South Australia for leading the push to withhold names from the census.
Mr. Racicot said Mr. Edwards could be portrayed as "slick and shallow," while another Bush associate described Mr. Edwards as the Breck Girl of politics, a reference to the shiny-hair model for a popular shampoo in the 1960's.
"But she certainly had a big impact and you can see it still today, you know people tend to define their politics by reference to her and what she stood for".
In the context of modern politics, those reference points might denote radical views – but in one important way, Yaqoob is a little more conservative (with a small "c" ) than hundreds of other people who have opted for politics beyond the usual three parties.
Instead Simon & Schuster sent a letter to bookstores describing the novel as "a rollicking, riveting tour de force that does for the media business what 'Primary Colors' did for politics," a reference to the best-selling roman à clef about President Bill Clinton whose author later was revealed to be Joe Klein.
Beppe Grillo had earlier described Parma as the "Stalingrad" of Italian politics, in reference to Hitler's decisive World War II defeat.
