Up from the blue

Tillie is an eight-year-old girl who doesn't stop. She buzzes with an incessant creative energy, dreaming and dancing and always talking, talking, talking: and all for her beautiful mother Mara.

But for Mara even the ordinary world is too much; suffocating under an unshakeable misery, all she longs for is life to leave her alone.

When Tillie's father receives a promotion, he sees a new chance to impose order - and by the time Tillie arrives in their new house her mother is nowhere to be seen.

Tillie's imagination feverishly tries to solve the mystery, but the truth is far more distressing than she ever could have thought.

An achingly real depiction of a family struggling with mental illness, Up from the Blue is a wrenching debut recalling the works of Lionel Shriver, Mark Haddon, and Emma Donoghue.