Porcupines

It is not unique to their relationship, and yet it certainly is true, that Sonia believes she knows what is going on in her daughter’s life – some days she is consumed by the weight of all the knowledge: of permission slips, of appointments, of hurt feelings and favourite songs. However, unbeknownst to her, a little wedge of mystery inserted itself into their lives two days, four hours and thirteen minutes ago, when Mila started the computer languishing in a corner of their living room. It’s 1990: the world has opened up again after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Szonja Imre travels from Hungary to visit her older sister in LA, an eighteen-year-old in search of adventure in the “land of the free”. What she doesn’t expect is the discovery that Rina, the sister she’s always idolised, has become an orthodox Jewish housewife and mother of two. To Szonja’s horrified teenage eyes, Rina’s life seems more restricted than the one she left behind in Budapest. Ten years later in the suburbs of LA, Sonia, unconventional and offbeat as ever, rails against the confines of her life as a single mother. Her beloved, precocious daughter Mila has struggles of her own: she excels at following school rules, but the unwritten social rules of the classroom remain a mystery to her. An even bigger mystery is the question of who her father is – a question her guarded mother stubbornly avoids. When Mila stumbles upon emails between Sonia and an unknown man, her curiosity sets in motion a chain of events that will cause their carefully constructed lives to implode. Wonderfully funny and brilliantly observed, this is an irresistible debut about mothers and daughters, loneliness and belonging, the things we carry with us, and those we leave behind.