Miles From Nowhere, by Nami Mun, Virago; £9.99

JOON is a Korean girl of 16 whose parents emigrated to the US when she was eight.

When she was 12 her father left her mother. Her mother sinks into a state of mental illness that is almost catatonic and Joon does her best to make her mother communicate, cutting off her own hair to shock her, playing heavy metal really loudly and staring at her. Nothing works and Joon eventually leaves home when she is 13.

She spends a few weeks at a shelter in the Bronx where she meets Knowledge, a streetwise young girl who acts as Joon’s protector. With Wink, a young male prostitute, they start a life on the streets.

But their lives continue to get worse as Joon works as a dance hostess and is eventually forced to have sex with a client, Knowledge deals in drugs and Wink continues to prostitute himself.

Joon comes to realise that “in order to get what I needed – shelter, food, money, friendship – parts of me, piece by piece, would have to be sacrificed”.

She spends her 15th birthday with her boyfriend, a 42-year-old who works at an ice rink. Inevitably, she becomes a prostitute, living with a male prostitute who is a drug user. When she becomes pregnant, she almost dies in an attempt to get rid of the baby.

High on drugs with a new boyfriend, she allows him to cut her because he wants to see her insides. Kindness from a man who runs an employment agency allows her to begin the slow journey back to recovery and finding forgiveness for herself.

This is Nami Mun’s first novel and is partly autobiographical.

It is set in 1980s New York with edgy street dialogue which paints a vivid picture of life in the Bronx for people who live on the edge of society. The central character, Joon, is vulnerable and naive and engages our sympathy.

The other major characters are vividly drawn. The novel ends on a note of hope.