Lena knew that the most tenuous of threads held everything together. At home she was known as the girl who lost things. Books, pens, wallets, her mother’s jewellery - the more precious the thing, the more likely she would lose it. She rifled through the pouch in from of her in search of her notebook. In New York she had learnt to take herself seriously, to believe that her thoughts and ideas mattered. I am no l other the person that I was, she incanted. I am different now. Coming home changes nothing.

Two women, two lives, two paths. But are they so very different? In this poignant, dark, humane and funny novel, mother and daughter take turns opening old wounds and replaying old scripts, struggling with what can and cannot be said. Cusp is a novel about how small worlds are part of big worlds. It’s also about being a girl, about loving your mother, about life and death, and about not quite being there and almost being here.