These Streets (Paperback, 384 pg) Luan Goldie

From the author of Nightingale Point, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020, comes a new thought-provoking novel.

Jess is a single mother to two teenage children, and although life can be tough she’s just about keeping things together. But when her landlord asks her to move on, so he can sell the house they’re living in without warning, Jess’s worries take on a whole new meaning. As Jess struggles to regain her footing, cracks begin to appear in other areas of her life, and suddenly she feels she’s failing at everything. Her daughter Hazel is becoming more and more distant, her son Jacob is struggling to find where he fits in the world, and the menacing spectre of Jess’s older brother, someone she cut out of her life years ago, begins to make his presence felt again.

Jess knows she’s the only one who can keep her family together, but how can she keep going when life keeps beating her back? Set on the streets of East London, These Streets is a searing and powerful novel that explores how we are meant to find our place in a world that is designed for only the privileged to succeed. Beautiful and honest, it is an essential story about living in Britain today.

About the author: Luan Goldie is a primary school teacher from East London. Her debut novel Nightingale Point was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. She has written several short stories and is the winner of the Costa Short Story Award 2017 for her short story ‘Two Steak Bakes and Two Chelsea Buns’. She was also shortlisted for the London Short Story Prize in 2018 and the Grazia/Orange First Chapter competition in 2012. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the h100 awards in the Publishing and Writing category. Her short stories have appeared in HELLO! magazine, Sunday Express and The Good Journal.