The Firing

14-year-old Anna resents her mother’s boyfriend Brian, ignores his twin sons and detests life in their council house in Whin, a small village outside Manchester. When trendy potter Colette moves into a nearby cottage Anna is intrigued by her and by her silently morose son, Wolf. The external drama of this debut novel – did Wolf sexually molest a girl in Berlin or not – which leads to various unlikely twists of plot is utterly unconvincing but MacSween paints a most entertaining and credible portrait of the dynamic that is played out between Anna, her hairdresser mum, her feckless dad and the long suffering Brian, not to speak of the twins, Declan and Diarmid.

MacSween’s narrative voice is laconically informal and his ear for dialogue and the minutiae of family life spot on. A talent to watch.