Pauline Holdstock

Here I Am! Pauline Holdstock

A 49th Shelf Editors' Pick

MyMum said sometimes refugees don't eat anything for days and days. Sometimes weeks and months so I am really lucky. I think she exaggerates. But I think she is right about the lucky bit. Or maybe not. Sometimes I forget that MyMum is dead. But that is probably better than remembering.

When Frankie's mother dies, he tells his teacher, of course. But he can't seem to get anyone at his school in southern England to listen to him. So the six-year-old comes up with a plan: go to France, find a police station and ask the officers to ring his father. Thus a stowaway's view of the sea opens Giller-nominated Pauline Holdstock's eighth novel, narrated in turns by Frankie - who likes cheese, numbers, the sea when it's pink and "smooth like counting", and being alone when he feels bad - and a cast of characters that includes his worried Gran, his callous teacher and his not-so-reliable father. Set in the summer of Annichka the Soviet space dog, Here I Am! is a mesmerizing story about the lucidity of children and the shortsightedness of adults.