Other Names, Other Places - A dazzling novel of family, identity and self

Mama, Baba... and Mrs Brown.

Wayward Nessie is caught between cultures: too English for her Tunisian parents, yet not ''white enough'' or ''African enough'' to fit in with any of the groups at school. Her father is determined to make the family ''respectable'', while Mama is lost in nostalgia for the country she left behind. Even Nessie''s sister Sherine, who appears to find it easiest to slip between identities, faces struggles of her own.

Then there is the charismatic Mrs Brown, who befriended her parents on their arrival in England. She soon becomes the glue holding the family together, until one day she disappears from their lives as quickly as she arrived.

Years later, struggling with patterns of self-sabotage, Nessie returns home to confront the mysteries of her childhood. Forced to re-examine everything she thought she knew, she begins to wonder: what really happened between her parents and Mrs Brown?