"Nice one granny, you’ve cleared the jelly! High five"

MY DAUGHTER is sitting in the conservatory looking over my mother’s shoulder. My mother, who has come to visit along with my sister, sits beside my daughter on the sofa, reading.

“What a wonderful book,” my mother says, lowering her book for the second time and looking at me over her reading glasses.

“You know,” she continues, “it might actually be the perfect novel. Gripping, perceptive and deeply humane, just like it says on the cover.