Palace of strange girls

Blackpool, 1959. The Singleton family is on holiday. For seven-year-old Beth, just out of hospital, struggling to fill in her 'I-Spy' book and avoiding her mother Ruth's eagle-eyed supervision. Her sixteen-year-old sister Helen, meanwhile, has befriended a waitress whose fun-loving ways hint at a life beyond Ruth's strict rules. Over the holiday week, all four must struggle to find their place in a shifting world of promenade amusements, illicit sex and stilted afternoon teas, in this touching and extraordinarily evocative novel.