'This is a novel about everything and nothing, sour and melancholy, with elements of sheer comedy and almost unbearable beauty' Guardian Book of the Day

It's 1972 and ten-year-old Deborah is living a ten-year-old life: butterscotch angel delight and Raleigh chopper bikes, Clunk Click and Crackajack, Jackanory, flares and ponchos.

But new girl Sarah-Jayne breezes into school, pretty as a picture, full of gossip and speculation as well as unlikely but thrilling stories about levitation. The other girls are dazzled but Deborah is wary. That same week, eighteen-year-old brickie Sonny turns up on her doorstep with a stray tortoise and begins an unlikely friendship with her young widowed mum. That's bad enough, Deborah thinks, but then Sonny starts work on a site opposite the school and Sarah-Jayne decides he's the latest love of her life. Nothing escapes Sarah-Jayne, and Deborah fears what she'll make of her mum. It's good to be different, her mum often says; but not, Deborah knows, too different.

So, Deborah changes tactics, keeping her friends close and her enemy closer, even stepping up for some of Sarah-Jayne's levitation sessions. But when she encounters Sarah-Jayne's big sister's fiance, Max, she senses that all isn't quite as it seems.

'A glorious writer... witty, well-observed and full of heart' Irish Independent

'A bittersweet, nostalgia-tinged adventure... with a steadily growing voltage' Daily Mail

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