As the mother of an eight-year-old it was rather difficult to read a book that is centred around a mother’s response to the death of her nine-year-old daughter in a car accident. Her daughter was very different to mine but I found it pretty nerve twisting all the same. The character in the book says at one point that it’s impossible to imagine how it is unless it happens to you but Louise Doughty did a pretty decent job of imagining it and getting it over to me. I had to put the book down for a while.

The book flipped between the present and the past in a very competent style but that does rather drag the events out. Fortunately the book eventually moves on and the characters response to events is very different to what (I think) mine would be so I didn’t end up too distraught. Very well written and fabulously imagined, I’ll be looking out for more of her books.