Fruitcake brings together four poem sequences about motherhood by ‘this brilliant lyricist of human darkness’ (Fiona Sampson). Bougainvillae explores love and having a mother. Nylon is about happiness, and not having or being a mother. Then Bunker Sacks brings grace but also the shock of being a young mother. Finally, Grunter shows the impact of Asperger’s syndrome on both mother and child. Like all of Selima Hill’s books, Fruitcake charts ‘extreme experience with a dazzling excess’ (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humor and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.