Set in a Yorkshire milltown in 1957, Ellen Hardy is unhappily married but is close to her ten-year-old son, Victor. The family has recently moved house and Victor has started at a new school where Ellen has become friendly with his teacher, Kathy Thompson, who is keen to encourage him at art. As...
Will they starve her? Shave her head? Force her to wear a hair shirt? Elspeth's friends and family react with horror, grief and even derision to her desire to become a nun. She experiences her parents' hurt, her fiancee's feeling of betrayal, her friends' incomprehension - and her own obstinate joy.
Single mother and immigrant Sonia Diaconescu works at a sheltered accommodation scheme. A resident of the scheme has made an official complaint against her, rousing the elderly community into a mob of angry and fearful citizens whose intolerance is palpable.
