Francis Wootton's first memory is of Kurt Cobain's death, and there have since been other hardships much closer to home.

At fifteen years old he already knows all about loss and rejection - and to top it all off he has a permanently broke big brother, a grandma with selective memory (and very selective social graces) and a mum who's at best an acquired taste.

Would-be poet, possible intellectual, and definitely wasted in Tyne and Wear, Francis has grown used to figuring life out on his own. Lower Fifth is supposed to be his time, the start of an endless horizon towards whatever-comes-next.

But when he is diagnosed with leukaemia that wide-open future suddenly narrows, and a whole new world of worry presents itself. There's the horror of being held back a year at school, the threat of imminent baldness, having to locate his best shirt in case a visiting princess or pop-star fancies him for a photo-op . . . But he hadn't reckoned on meeting Amber - fierce, tough, one-of-a-kind Amber - and finding a reason to tackle it all - the good, the bad, and everything in between - head on. In Bloom is a bright, funny, painful, and refreshing novel about wanting the very best from life, even when life shows you how very bad it can be.

It is a novel about how to live.