'Gorgeous'

'Uproariously funny'

'Spellbinding'

'Brilliant'

'Luminously beautiful'

January, 1982. Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor - covert stammerer and reluctant poet - anticipates a stultifying year in his backwater English village. But he hasn't reckoned with bullies, simmering family discord, the Falklands War, a threatened gypsy invasion and those mysterious entities known as girls. Charting thirteen months in the black hole between childhood and adolescence, this is a captivating novel, wry, painful and vibrant with the stuff of life.

'A thrilling and gifted writer'

'Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good'

'Mitchell is, clearly, a genius'

'An author of extraordinary ambition and skill'

'A superb storyteller'