Columbus Day

It’s 1973 and Jessica is ten. Jessica’s mother, Olivia, turns heads wherever she goes. She’s young and beautiful, wears Chanel No 19, Yves St Laurent, loves David Bowie, and can’t even cook fish-fingers. But all that she’s really interested in is finding her father, and he’s been missing for over twenty years. They look for his blonde hair and elegant figure, his Savile-Row suit and jewelled cufflinks wherever they go: in the promenade crowds of Blackpool; in telephone directories of strange northern towns: in well-worn maps of far-away states. Until finaly even Jess wishes that they could stop searching and live for a while as her friends do, with their domestic mothes and 9-5 fathers, Janette Jenkin’s first novel is a funny, subtle and poignant story of a young girl, troubled yet entranced by the adults around her. This compelling and unsettling journey from eccentricity to something far darker is revealed with great humour and tenderness.