Angel Cake

Anya’s dreams of sun-filled skies and life in a rose-covered cottage crumble on arrival in Britain. She’s come to Liverpool from Krakow with her mother and younger sister to join her father, who left the family home three years ago in search of work. Instead of dreams, she’s faced with the reality of a sordid flat above a chip shop in a city that is forever grey and rainy. She misses friends and relatives and has little English – certainly not enough to help her through her first days at school. She’s teased and bullied and made to feel that she doesn’t belong. Particularly bewildering is the behaviour of bad boy Dan, who sets fire to his exercise book and then plays truant. Yet the next time she comes across him, he’s wrapped in angel wings, looking sweet and gentle – and strangely endearing.

Teenage concerns of friendships, first love and belonging are set within larger themes of migration, prejudice and integration. Anya’s sense of being different runs parallel with Dan’s emotional distancing from school and his dad, and both need to find ways of coming to terms with their life. The author has a knack of expressing young people’s feelings and concerns, and the characters are convincingly alive. Though a third-person viewpoint may have helped to create a truer, more disjointed perspective of the immigrant’s experience during the first few months – a person looking in from the outside, fumbling with language and alien experiences – the story’s colloquial language and intimate first-person narrative will appeal to a wide readership. This is a positive book, breezy in style and cheerful in its ending.