A Complicated Matter

Set against the Blitz in London, a young woman''s extraordinary journey of self-discovery and an intimate meditation on what it takes to find our place in the world.

A March Best Book in Red

''NOTE PERFECT'' East Riding Magazine
''AN EXTRAORDINARY NEW WRITER'' Nina Stibbe

I used to believe the world had been created for me; every stone and grain of sand. As I grew older, I began to think of myself as something tacked on to the edge.

1939, London: From McPhail''s Passage to Kensington''s Grand Palace Hotel, Rose Dunbar is evacuated from her humble home on the Rock of Gibraltar and dropped into a chaotic city of falling bombs, perplexing class rules and bad weather. Despite being ''flagrantly foreign'' to the locals, she becomes an efficient go-between for the upper-class ladies helping out with the war effort and her own tribe of noisy displaced families.

It is only when she is shifted to the countryside