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A brilliant new talent writing from lived experience makes his debut with this irresistible and original story in the vein of Young Mungo and Hang the Moon, that pierces the beautiful, brilliant, and lightning-quick mind of a teenage girl growing up with undiagnosed ADHD in working-class Scotland.
In the blazing hot summer of 1994, there's nothing for Cora Mowat to do but hang around in empty parking lots. Stuck in her Mom's small house and tired of her own restless mind, she's desperate to break free of the limits of Fife but unsure of what the future holds—if it holds anything at all for a girl like her trying to find her way in the world.
After her mother invites a new man to live with them, tensions quickly rise in the cramped house. Gunner is kind but strange, too, a one-eyed shoplifter with more than a few hidden secrets. But when tragedy strikes shortly after, Cora rebels against her small-town existence in search of love, acceptance, and a path to something good. If only she can learn to navigate her grief and everything, she thinks she knows about who she is and what she might be capable of, she may finally find the way forward.
In this extraordinary debut, drawn from experience but written with riotous imagination, Tom Newlands explores a teenage girl's coming-of-age in post-industrial Scotland and what it means to yearn for a life that feels out of reach. Vibrant, lyrical and fiercely funny, “Only Here, Only Now” is a story of identity and family that shines with hope and resilience.
In the blazing hot summer of 1994, there's nothing for Cora Mowat to do but hang around in empty parking lots. Stuck in her Mom's small house and tired of her own restless mind, she's desperate to break free of the limits of Fife but unsure of what the future holds—if it holds anything at all for a girl like her trying to find her way in the world.
After her mother invites a new man to live with them, tensions quickly rise in the cramped house. Gunner is kind but strange, too, a one-eyed shoplifter with more than a few hidden secrets. But when tragedy strikes shortly after, Cora rebels against her small-town existence in search of love, acceptance, and a path to something good. If only she can learn to navigate her grief and everything, she thinks she knows about who she is and what she might be capable of, she may finally find the way forward.
In this extraordinary debut, drawn from experience but written with riotous imagination, Tom Newlands explores a teenage girl's coming-of-age in post-industrial Scotland and what it means to yearn for a life that feels out of reach. Vibrant, lyrical and fiercely funny, “Only Here, Only Now” is a story of identity and family that shines with hope and resilience.
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Reviews
Narrator Amelia Leith convincingly presents this coming-of-age story set in 1990s Scotland. Listeners meet 14-year-old Cora, whose wheelchair-bound mother invites a one-eyed petty criminal named Gunner to live with them. Leith's endearing, independent Cora struggles in school and is protective of her mother. Varying descriptions of the changeable Scottish weather and the countryside add atmosphere
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