Saltwater by Jessica Andrews

Saltwater

Jessica Andrews

Lucy is struggling to come to terms with her life in her grandfather's cottage in Donegal. Brought up in Sunderland by her stressed mother, a drunken father and with a deaf brother, she goes to university in London and becomes a different person - but not necessarily someone that she likes. This is a gripping coming-of-age story, told in sequences but not chronologically. It really is entrancing.

Extract
Drunk dancing lets me forget. I am liquid in sequins with vodka-coated synapses, spilling and melting in the curly dark. My limbs are glossy in fake-tan shimmer as strobe lights puddle in spilt drinks and I fill my empty spaces with dry ice and smoke. You do not like my lies and my secrets, the smell of someone else's pillow strung through my hair. I spend hours sunk in bubbles, locking you out, soaping the traces away.
Parallels
  • Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay
  • Milkman by Anna Burns
  • The Diary of Andy Angus: the Lost Years by Joe Brewer-Lennon
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Explicit sexual content