This novel of a thirty-year-old epileptic woman and her estranged family is “mesmerizing . . . and unexpectedly tender” (Jim Crace, author of Harvest).
Lily O’Connor lives with epilepsy, uncontrollable surges of electricity that leave her in a constant state of edginess. Prickly and practical, she’s learned to make do, to make the most of things, to look after—and out for—herself.
Then her mother—whom Lily has not seen for years—dies, and Lily is drawn back into a world she thought she’d long since left behind. Reunited with her brother, a charismatic poker player, Lily pursues her own high-stakes gamble, leaving for London to track down her other, missing brother Mikey. In the pandemonium of the city, Lily’s seizures only intensify. As her journey takes her from her comfort zone, it leads her into the question of what her life is meant to be.
“A wry, ingenuous, hugely compassionate heroine.” —The Guardian
“A gritty tour of both London and the wrecked neurological pathways of epileptic Lily O’Connor. With equal parts hip misanthropy and sweet, clean-hearted sentiment, Ray Robinson convincingly channels the voice of a woman at war with the material world, for whom language itself arrives as a jarring shock to the brain.” —Jonathan Raymond, author of The Half-Life
