Billy and Girl

From the author of Swimming Home, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
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''A postmodern tragicomedy of childhood, original as always'' - Michele Roberts, Independent on Sunday Books of the Year

''It''s profoundly serious, combining massive abstractions - love, desire, the universality of pain - with the diminutive in a way that''s often witty, sometimes lyrical and, amazingly, very rarely trivialising'' - Guardian

''Sharp, savage and spry, Levy shows us what kinship is really about in this strange, touching and totally original novel'' - Darian Leader
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In the Freezerworld toy section, all the girl princess dolls stand proud in their tiny gold shoes. Big hair and luned-out stares. Girl says, listen, one day I will have a kingdom too.

Billy and his sister, Girl, are clever, stylish and damaged. They live somewhere in England and are searching for their missing mother. They think she might be lurking in Freezerworld, a mega superstore on the edge of a motorway. Yet it is a young woman stocking the shelves in this ''frozen world'' who attracts their attention. Girl, who wants a proper name, feels a special bond with her as she gazes at the name tag on her uniform. Will she lead them to their mother?

Billy & Girl is both a joyful contemporary fairy tale and a hard hitting critique of the beginning of frantic consumerism in the 1990s.