Lola Rose

More a catalyst for complications than a recipe for rejoicing, a £10,000 lottery win enables battered mother Nikki, an ex-model, to leave her lousy husband Jay, an ex-con. G.B.H.ed into action after yet another vicious beating, mother, daughter Jayni and young son Kenny flee their home in the middle of the night and head for the bright lights of London.

The runaways adopt pseudonyms and plain plumpish Jayni becomes ‘Lola Rose’, all glitz, glamour and grown-up. She needs to be. Her peroxide blonde mother gets pickled at work, befriends and beds an undergraduate student and fritters away their lotto loot on retail therapy. Just when you’d think things could only get better, their lives are blighted again when their mother discovers a lump on her breast.

The domestic violence of the start is powerfully depicted and the emotional – and emotive – drama of the second half is sensitively presented. Throughout this dramatic and moving novel, the fragility of health and happiness is underscored by references to sharks, symbolic of the hidden threats that regularly and indiscriminately puncture the glossy surface of existence, the real ‘lottery’ of life.