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.

'[T]he best thing I've read in ages... It made me laugh out loud on the Underground.' -- Louise Welsh 'A deliciously morish, magic potion of a book. Wonderfully strange, funny and capricious.' -- Laura Marney 'Loads of assurance, buckets of colour, packed with beautifully etched observation and piles of raw honesty - this is a debut novel that keeps you wide-eyed with admiration...this rollicking, unsentimental tale is a great downpayment on Brooks's career. I loved its bravura, its infiltration of the characters' drives and foibles. A compact gem.' -- Tom Adair THE SCOTSMAN (14.5.05) 'It's a strange, funny and capricious book - it will make you sad, but it will also make you laugh out loud.' BELFAST TELEGRAPH (14.5.05) 'There is a witch's heart beating at the bottom of Nick Brooks; debut novel...the novel does...clever things with the oral tradition. Fireside tales are cleverly re-worked for grim 1980s Glasgow...accomplished.' -- Peter John Meiklem BIG ISSUE IN SCOTLAND (5.5.05) 'Nick Brooks's entertaining first novel explores the experience of being an outsider looking in, the sense of never quite getting the hang of life. Stylishly written, it has some hilariously quirky moments, but the core subject matter is painful - a strangely isolated urban childhood.' -- Jennie Renton SUNDAY HERALD (19.6.05)

Nick Brooks was born and still lives in Glasgow. He graduated from the University of Glasgow, where he has recently completed its postgraduate degree in Creative Writing.