Longlisted for the 2002 Women's Prize for Fiction
When Maggie is thirteen she goes to live with her grandfather, Pop, in Sutton Coldfield. Pop knows everything – he’s quiz champion of the Plough and Harrow and his ambition is to appear on Sale of the Century. Maggie knows about the great comedians – Max Wall, Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Eric and Ernie – about country music, and about how her mother died. Pop sings with the poetry of the suburbs and aches with the poignancy of adolescence. Kitty Aldridge has a wonderfully distinctive voice and a deliciously sharp eye for the extraordinariness of ordinary lives.
