How Far Can You Go? (1980)
David Lodge

      . . . and a girl you have not been introduced to, who now comes forward from the shadows of the side aisle, where she has been lurking, to join the others at the altar rail.  Let her be called Violet, no Veronica, no Violet, improbable a name as that is for Catholic girls of Irish extraction, customarily named after saints and figures of Celtic legend, for I like the connotations of Violet--shrinking, penitential, melancholy -- a diminutive, dark haired girl, a pale, pretty face ravaged by eczema, fingernails bitten down to the quick and stained by nicotine, a smartly cut needlecord coat sadly creased and soiled; a girl, you might guess from all this evidence, with problems, guilts, hangups.

[David Lodge, How Far Can You Go?  New York: Morrow, 1982.]