Tom Newlands may make several prize lists for his stunning debut, a portrait of a teenager with undiagnosed ADHD in a working-class, post-industrial community in Scotland. Newlands, who is himself neurodivergent, says he opted for a female perspective because he “wanted to tell the story of a young girl at odds with this male environment”.
Only Here, Only Now begins in 1994. Fourteen-year-old Cora lives with her mum on a council estate in Muircross, a fictional seaside town in Fife, and dreams of carving out a life for herself in Glasgow. When her mother brings home a new boyfriend, one-eyed Gunner, he changes the family dynamic. We follow Cora over the next four years, her struggles at school and uneasy relationship with her “stepda”. Newlands’s impulsive, bold protagonist, who dreams big despite having very little, is richly layered, and he conveys her disorientation as she tries to make sense of her actions.
