The most immediately endearing feature of Nick Brook's first novel is its heroine: a feisty, troublesome, spirited girl with her childhood eating disorder (only white things basically) and her teenage crushes, she is abandoned by her mother and tormented by her sister, hopeless at school but despite all that original and memorable and identifiable. She's the archetypal strange child, growing up in Glasgow tenements in the 80s with her indulgent and eccentric grandmother, while her policeman father and strategically ill mother battle it out at home. In to the story of Denise is woven other stories, fictions spun by her grandmother about witches and fallen women, stories of the streets that Denise and her grandmother stalk, together, murder and daily violence forming a disconcerting background to shopping and school. Nick Brooks is a distinctive talent with great potential. His voice is strong and lyrical and clear.