Julie Myerson meets Ian McEwan in this gripping novel of family breakdown.

Ana Lewis is trapped by her own expectations. Her intense relationship with fellow student Alex begins to crack beyond repair when she falls pregnant, and his subsequent withdrawal, emotionally and sexually are hard for Ana to bear. Eventually, following the birth of Pip and then Davie, Alex leaves Ana to a life of question and blame. Locked in her room for much of the time she woefully neglects her children, preferring instead to replay scenes from her life over and over, fighting the urge to blink for fear it should dissipate the memories.

Told within the context of two black boxes, one Ana’s and one Pip’s, the story reveals the key factors that have contributed to this catastrophic breakdown of life. In Black Box 01 we meet Ana as she begins to deconstruct her life. She rails against Alex and his inability to love her, or to put her ahead of his domineering mother.

Black Box 02 is Pip’s diary which details in a schoolgirl terms the neglect that both Pip and Davie have suffered. Pip talks of her mother’s deterioration, lack of cleanliness and of her mother’s obsessions. Pip and Davie communicate through finger sign language, as their mother demands silence. Davie retreats into his own world, permanently soiled and communicating only by sign, while Pip, fat and desperate, sneaks out of the house at night to have sex with a boy who hates her. Pip and Davie exist in parallel, with only Ana's bedroom door separating her from them. She does not want to see them. They are the present and Ana chooses to live in a past, continually raking over the ashes of a relationship that was never really hers.

Accomplished and affecting, Caroline Smailes weaves together a catastrophic tale of mismatched lives.

‘Will Self and Caroline Smailes are arch-experimentalists’ OBSERVER

Caroline Smailes was born in Newcastle in 1973. She moved to the North West to study English Literature at Liverpool University. A chance remark on a daytime chat show spurred her to enrol on an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. Caroline graduated in 2007 with distinction and won the Michael Schmidt Prize for the best novel portfolio of the year. Her first novel, In Search of Adam, was published in 2007 and she is currently working on her third – a historical novel based on her family roots in Malta.

Caroline is currently an Associate Lecturer for the Open University and lives in the North West with her husband and three children.