“The other hand” by Chris Cleave

A Nigerian girl is released from a British detention centre. She phones a journalist, then walks to Kingston-upon-Thames to meet him. She turns up two hours before his funeral; in the intervening ten days he has committed suicide. She helps his widow look after the four year old son, who thinks he is Batman.

But these two women have already met on a beach in Nigeria. And what is the secret of the missing finger?

The prose is lyrical, the plot twists and turns. This is a magical book.

August 2011; 374 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God