Clare Allan won the Orange/Harpers short story prize back in 2002. I read her winning piece at the time, and couldn’t get it out of my head. She demonstrated a genuinely thrilling new voice, capturing perfectly the tone of a mental hospital ward, its tension, its maddening logic and above all its camaraderie.

So when I heard that her debut novel was imminent, I asked your literary editor for the chance to review it. OK, not asked, more like camped outside the Doughty Street office for a month, singing sonnets of longing, that sort of thing. Thankfully, I wasn’t sectioned. I was sent the book.

My obsession paid off. Allan’s candid portrayal of a day patient at the Dorothy Fish rehabilitation unit in north London is funny, lyrical (for all its intentional bad grammar) and deeply affecting.

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