Five Miles from Outer Hope

Summer, 1981. Medve, sixteen years old and six foot three in her crocheted stockings, is marooned in a semi-derelict hotel on a tiny island off the coast of Devon. There’s nothing to do but paint novelty Thatcher mugs, dream of literary murderer Jack Henry Abbott, and despair of her gothically unprepossessing family — including Mo, her sex toy — inventing mother; Poodle, her shamefully flat-chested sister; and four-year-old Feely, who wants to grow up to be a bulimic (he thinks it's a vet who specialises in livestock). Until one day a ginger-headed stranger arrives, stinking of antiseptic. .

One of our most enjoyably unconventional contemporary writers, Nicola Barker, roots out the darkly surreal in a forgotten corner of England, with results that are hilariously original and poignant.