A Town Called Solace: ‘Will break your heart’ Graham Norton

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The past year has seen many sharp novels from younger female authors investigating how the internet influences minds, relationships and working lives, but the only example here is Patricia Lockwood’s virtuoso debut No One Is Talking About This: savagely funny on social media addiction and then truly tragic on family pain. In Hardy and Dickens, young men leave the country for the city, running away from disgrace or pursuing their fortune. It took me back to all the addresses I’ve lived in - the lesbian squat in Vauxhall, John le Carré’s house in Hampstead!

She has her finger in many pies from teaching to being a senior library consultant at Consilium Education to being executive editor at NotesVilla.

In Mrs Orchard’s case, that earthquake arrived in the form of a little boy and the aftershock continued for decades afterwards, proving that a single moment and one bad decision can leave a shadow on a life that can be hard to shake off.

They re-inject humanity into our distant forebears, suggesting that our prevailing story about human history – that not much innovation occurred in human societies until the invention of agriculture – is utterly wrong. Her characters, often full of regret and sorrow, take a shadowy past as a prompt to reset their lives. He can’t work out what to do with his life and he hopes temporarily living in the house will give him some breathing space. So Solace, while not a real town, is true to her memory and, despite the sometimes gruff or know-it-all locals, an emotional landmark for the three central characters, all of whom are processing trauma and looking for places of comfort where they can start over.Clara carries the burdens of loss and grief that are difficult even for adults to handle and I dare you not to be heartbroken for her.