When we meet Robyn, she is stealing coffee and tins of salmon from the corner shop; not items you'd imagine topping the average 11-year-old's wish list, even in the 1970s, but the twist here is that Robyn is acting on her parents' orders. "And if you get caught you're on your own, you stupid bitch," they tell her, before heading to the pub.

Living on the second floor of a Liverpool tenement block is not unrelentingly grim – snotty neighbours are balanced by sympathetic types – but when Robyn's kindly nan moves to her own flat, Robyn is left to the whims of her parents: a dad whose moods swerve like the one-two of the LOVE/HATE tattoos on his knuckles, and a mum who can't stand up to him.

Robyn is a tenderly realised protagonist in a position of extreme victimhood, which she never finds the strength to challenge. And while the plot is misery lit, the book is shot through with gorgeous images and subtle humour.