Mountains of the Moon

The immense panache of the narrator of Mountains of the Moon lifts it way above mere plot. In essence, a woman with a hard childhood and an even harder adolescence behind her, just released from prison, recalls the fragments of her life and begins to forge a new one - but a bald summary does the book a disservice. The voice I J Kay creates for her protagonist Lou - or Mitten, Jackie, Kim and so on - is utterly distinctive, yet evolves and matures with each shift of name and self.

Seven-year-old Lulu, dealing with an unstable mother and a violent stepfather, is mesmerising. She speaks in phonetic, grammatically-tangled vernacular, peppered with morbid malapropisms and misquotations: 'massacre' for "mascara', 'three more hours to kill me'. Kay is a good judge of how much sadness can be borne; she gives us Lulu's story in short vignettes, each embroidered with the child's fantasies about Africa (which bear cathartic fruit in her adult life).

The formally experimental style and structure, with fractured timelines, and episodes of fantasy and hallucination, won't suit every reader. Stick with it, though - effort is repaid with the acquaintance of an unforgettable character and an absorbing and memorable story