She looked like someone who has had a hard life and no money to take care of herself, like a broken woman at the end of the world, dead on her feet, skin slapped over her bones like white paint, old white paint, slightly yellow. Her shoulders and collarbones were sticking out of her skin like … like nothing. There is nothing I know that is as awful as her bones poking out of her dirty yellow chicken-skin.

Chelsea doesn’t attend school much any more. She is carer for her mother who is sinking further into depression after a trauma, and her Grandad who has slipped into full-blown dementia. Her father is long gone; others are shadowy memories - intangible like dreams. Barely known ghosts make for strange company. Then a parcel arrives, and in it are questions-about her mother and her past self, their shared histories, and the people and place from which they’ve run.

The Earth Does Not Get Fat is a powerful and gut-wrenching debut about intense suffering and love-fierce, searing love.