Beauty - in both name and appearance - is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back in England having shocked her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage. Now she is forced onto the jobseekers' treadmill.
Her fractious encounters with officialdom, fellow claimants, strangers and passers-by in the city streets, exacerbated by the restrictions (and comfort) of her language and culture, place her at the mercy of such unlikely helpers as Mark, a friendly, dog-owning ex-offender, and Peter, the middle-class underachiever on the rebound from a bitter relationship.
Such 'white' influences conflict with the pressure to toe the family religious line, enforced by her older brother, but enable Beauty to understand better how free will and parental care affect her personal destiny in fragmented inner-city England today.
WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2009
'Captures the raw humanity of inner city life with extraordinary authenticity.' Costa Judges 2009
'Shocking, explosive and tender: I could not put it down' Maggie Gee 'Selbourne brilliantly plays out a comedy of conflicting cultural and class expectations, repeatedly confounding reader's expectations… Through Beauty herself, he gives the tale of the innocent abroad an original twist' Financial Times
'Selbourne writes convincingly both of Beauty's Bengali household and Mark's working-class world of casual sex, pubs and hard manual labour. Grim and threatening, this first novel is also occasionally very funny' Independent
'Selbourne's depiction of the relationship between Beauty and Mark is touching. The innocence of their friendship is unexpected and sweetly convincing' Observer
Her fractious encounters with officialdom, fellow claimants, strangers and passers-by in the city streets, exacerbated by the restrictions (and comfort) of her language and culture, place her at the mercy of such unlikely helpers as Mark, a friendly, dog-owning ex-offender, and Peter, the middle-class underachiever on the rebound from a bitter relationship.
Such 'white' influences conflict with the pressure to toe the family religious line, enforced by her older brother, but enable Beauty to understand better how free will and parental care affect her personal destiny in fragmented inner-city England today.
WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2009
'Captures the raw humanity of inner city life with extraordinary authenticity.' Costa Judges 2009
'Shocking, explosive and tender: I could not put it down' Maggie Gee 'Selbourne brilliantly plays out a comedy of conflicting cultural and class expectations, repeatedly confounding reader's expectations… Through Beauty herself, he gives the tale of the innocent abroad an original twist' Financial Times
'Selbourne writes convincingly both of Beauty's Bengali household and Mark's working-class world of casual sex, pubs and hard manual labour. Grim and threatening, this first novel is also occasionally very funny' Independent
'Selbourne's depiction of the relationship between Beauty and Mark is touching. The innocence of their friendship is unexpected and sweetly convincing' Observer
