Orlaine McDonald’s blistering debut explores a year in the life of a working-class Black family reluctantly thrown together on a south London estate. Livia is dismayed when her estranged daughter, Mickey, turns up on her doorstep with her 10-year-old grandchild, Summer, in tow. She has worked hard to distance herself from her past. Fifteen years before, Livia walked out on a loving partner, Jimmy, as well as their daughter.
Devastated by her desertion, Mickey started failing at school, and became pregnant at 17. She in turn neglects her hyperactive daughter, Summer, who flounders at primary school, possibly with undiagnosed ADHD. They have few friends and no support network: “Perhaps it’s genetic.” Livia muses. “Perhaps there is something in the makeup of our biology, some mutation of cell, some scent we give off that turns other women away, some marker that we are predisposed for destruction.”
