A Crooked Tree
This spur-of-the-moment decision will have far-reaching and devastating consequences not just for 12-year-old Ellen Gallagher but for her four siblings, an unruly family growing up in the mountains of rural Pennsylvania in the 1980s.
Welcome to A Crooked Tree, the rich and atmospheric debut novel from Una Mannion, a writer who was born in Philadelphia but now lives in County Sligo in Ireland, and who thrills us with this resonant, moving and gripping coming-of-age tale set in the days when playtime meant roaming free, and the obsession with technology had not started to erode childhood experience.
Written through the eyes of Ellen’s 15-year-old sister Libby, and with a tenderness and compassion that will take your breath away, this acutely perceptive and haunting story of domestic dysfunction captures all the uncertainty, emotion, frustration and yearnings of adolescence as a group of free-range youngsters are forced to peer into the cruel realities of the adult w
LUSTER
by Raven Leilani (Picador £14.99, 240 pp)
This debut was a big deal in America last year and hits the UK riding a tsunami of praise.
Edie is 23, living in a mouse-ridden flat, floundering in her job in publishing and with a history of ill-judged sexual relationships, when she starts an online flirtation with Eric, an older, married, white man.
Before long, Edie has moved in with Eric, his wife Rebecca and their adopted 12-year-old black daughter, Akila.
Edie sleeps with Eric, has a strangely intimate friendship with Rebecca, strikes up a tentative relationship with Akila and decides she’s happy to take the cash that keeps appearing mysteriously in her room, despite the nature of the transaction being far from clear.
"A Crooked Tree" by Una Mannion; Harper (320 pages, $27.99) ——— Una Mannion’s perceptive debut “A Crooked Tree” pinpoints the exact moment when 15-year-old narrator Libby Gallagher’s family unravels beyond
"A Crooked Tree" by Una Mannion; Harper (320 pages, $27.99) ——— Una Mannion’s perceptive debut “A Crooked Tree” pinpoints the exact moment when 15-year-old narrator Libby Gallagher’s family unravels beyond