Han Smith‘s “unforgettable” (Ruby Cowling) debut novel Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking has been praised in a review for The Guardian.

In the review, which you can read in full here, A. K. Blakemore, author of The Manningtree Witches and The Glutton, writes:

“This ambitious debut uncovers a town’s dark past, in a story of teenage dissidence that is alert to the deceptions of propaganda […]. Smith is a linguist, and a writer who clearly pays supreme attention to the dynamics of language […]. For all its turbid darkness, this is a novel full of hopeful glitter – and one I know I will return to.”

The almost daughter is almost normal, because she knows how to know and also not know.

She knows and does not know, for instance, about the barracks by the athletics field, and about the lonely woman she visits each week. She knows—almost—about ghosts, and their ghosts, and she knows not to have questions about them. She knows to focus on being a woman: on training her body and dreaming only of escape.

Then, the almost daughter meets Oksana. Oksana is not even almost normal, and the questions she has are not normal at all.

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is a story of seeing and part-seeing, of silence and speaking out, of conformation and confrontation, by an exhilarating new voice in fiction.

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is out now. Grab your copy here or, better, via your local bookshop or Bookshop.org.

Follow Han on Twitter @Han_Smiff.