Seven year old Clara is smart and wise and sad, sweet with innocence and one of the most responsible children I know in books or in real life.

Reissued this year with impassioned praise from fellow authors such as Marlon James, Patricia Lockwood and Max Porter, Mrs Caliban (Faber) by Rachel Ingalls is a work of true verve and imagination. Mary Lawson was born and brought up in a small farming community in southwestern Ontario and moved to England after graduating from McGill University with a degree in psychology. They are like closeups, snapshots of little action, complex inner worlds, all of whom have been tilted in some way and are in the process of finding their upright…’ I love that description. Babygirl' is the new type of man that everyone loves - from Barry Keoghan to Jacob Elordi (although nobody can quite agree what it means!David Harewood’s documentary Psychosis and Me was an eye-opener for his honesty in reflecting on his experiences in the mental health system.

Enter thirtyish Liam Kane, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, where he promptly moves into the house next door–watched suspiciously by astonished and dismayed Clara, whose elderly friend, Mrs.

The handsome man Clara watches and tries to outsmart is Liam, now weathered and a self-declared misanthrope escaping the misery of a marriage that sputtered along years too long. That window overlooks the house of her neighbour Elizabeth ("Old but nice"), whose cat Clara is feeding while its owner is in hospital. Liam’s] life prior to coming north seemed to be taking on the quality of an old movie, one in which he’d been deeply engrossed while watching it but which now seemed trivial, unconvincing and profoundly lacking in either colour or plot.

Even minor characters – from Liam’s tough, touchy wife Fiona to Mrs Orchard’s wilful cat Moses – seem to have lives beyond the page. A loving relationship with her late husband, soured only by her inability to bear the child for which she longed, she is everything that Liam could want in a mother, particularly when his own proves so emotionally distant. I sometimes suspect that I was actually found abandoned in a tree, adopted and raised as a family secret. Geographical range’ … 2021 Booker prize longlistees (from left clockwise: Kazuo Ishiguro, Rachel Cusk, Richard Powers, Patricia Lockwood, Sunjeev Sahota and Nadifa Mohamed.

BookWorm’s Thoughts: While I really enjoyed this book and absolutely loved the character of Clara I have to say it feels too light weight for the Booker Longlist.

These formations are ancient; the Precambrian era is the earliest of the planet's geological eras, encompassing all of the time before the evolutionary development of complex life. It's beautifully written and so finely crafted; told in the kind of prose I most admire because it takes what appears to be complicated and makes it clear. Eloquent and thoughtful…Not only has Lawson fulfilled the promise of her first novel, she has surpassed it in a layered, complex story about emotional power shifts.Orchard, in her late seventies, who thought she was going for a brief stay in the hospital but was mistaken. Was Elizabeth wrong to allow Clara in her house, without having discussed her previous mental health issues with Clara’s parents?