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I will emphasise up front that my low rating reflects (as always) my personal reaction to the book - as I think it is one that many other readers will appreciate both for the under-represented topic (life in the care system) it covers and as they will engage with the two main protagonists plight and particularly the striking central character.

I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Women’s Prize.

I have to say that I normally enjoy the Women’s Prize longlist due to its mix of books from more “book club�� to “literary�� fiction - I think for almost anyone that reads a large chunk of the longlist it is likely to introduce you to books of a type you would not normally read (whether that’s more mainstream or more experimental).

And I guess that is probably the positive way for me to reflect on the inclusion of this book which to me at least felt very YA fiction - not just in its protagonist but in its voice (first person, present tense), writing style (relatively simplistic) and themes (complex and important), and while that is a familiar genre in my household (I have three daughters between 11 and 15) it is not one I normally read myself (except for a few chapters aloud at night) and would not normally expect to see on the Women’s Prize.

Perhaps for balance though I would say that I admire the author’s fidelity to the voice of her narrator - too many literary authors when writing younger or (in different ways) more naïve narrators seem to imbue them with cutting edge imaginative sensibilities (think for example Sebastian Barry in the otherwise excellent “Days Without End��); however taking this different approach does not really fit a great reading experience for my own tastes.

The narrator of the book is a 15 year old girl Bess, who is living in Shepperton in long term Foster Care (since being a young child) with her foster mother Lisa (who works in an optician), father Rory (an ex serviceman) and their 10 year old birth child Clarissa. Bess we learn was placed into care when her mother (who she has not visited since although one of a string of Social Workers who manage her case has given Bess her address) tried to harm her. The relationship between Bess and Lisa is one of the three pivotal relationships at the heart of the novel - in some ways a typical teenage daughter/Mum tension but fueled with the additional knowledge on both sides that their relationship, despite its tenure, is both not permanent (there is always the underlying but unspoken threat on both sides to end it), not “natural�� (Lisa has a temptation very close to - and sometimes above - the surface to refer to Bess’s flawed origins and lack of “gratitude��) and (something the author via Bess seems to stress a lot) fundamentally transactional in nature (in that Lisa and Rory are paid to foster her and expense/invoice their care for her).

Bess is something of an outcast at school - a Goth Girl in a school portrayed as extremely rough and in an area portrayed as the opposite of aspirational. Her academic success seems patchy but she is also fuelled by a desire to be a Film Director - a desire inspired by the famous nearby film studios.

Her only friend is Eshal - a similar outcast at school as the only Asian in the school (universally derided as “a Paki�� in ignorance of her English birth and Bangladeshi heritage. Eshal is very successful at school and aiming for a Veterinary college - the one “fly in the ointment�� being that she knows her Muslim parents are planning an arranged marriage for her and is completely torn between her respect both for them and for their traditions (and her own deep down faith, despite her own rebellious tendencies) and, on the other side, her desire to have the ability to make her own choices.

The book opens with Bess realising she is pregnant (shortly before her 16th birthday) - and the book ranges back around a year or so from there to show how she met the father: Boy - a 19 year old who she first meets fleeing the site of a joy riding crash into a church (a church Bess later visits albeit she is unable to find the same underpinning of faith as Eshal). Boy she later finds works as Tesco’s and lives (estranged from his parents) a precarious hand to mouth existence with his sister - a single Mum (the baby’s father being in jail).

The book then traces Bess and Eshal’s attempts to navigate Bess’s pregnancy. An initial attempt at a traditional home-made abortion ends with alcohol poisoning, second degree burns and with Eshal’s horrified parents accelerating their plans and then makes Bess and Eshal’s choices increasingly time constrained as well as increasingly conflicted from their foster parents/parents.

I must admit I did not really like a number of aspects of the way that the book developed. The Eshal storyline left me uneasy as I was not sure how appropriated it was - and the resolution in particular seemed both incredibly neat and potentially culturally implausible (another very detailed and informative review on here seems to confirm that). I was unconvinced the authorities would not have done more to trace Boy. While the author is clearly infinitely more qualified than me to talk about living in care and being a care leaver - I did feel that the role of Foster Parents was given a fairly black and white treatment - and I was completely unable to tie it up with a number of people over the years who I have known to foster. And I also found the resolution of Bess’s own dilemma troubling purely for personal reasons.

So overall a competently written book - but one which I was both surprised to see on the longlist and which did not quite work for me (hence my rating).