Narrator Mary Mooney \u2013 also a novelist, also from York, and whose first book is also shortlisted for a major prize \u2013 tells the story of her mental illness. Or she seems to. She begins in childhood. We\u2019re introduced to her parents and her parents\u2019 friends, religious academics in York; to her home in Cathedral Close; to school and her school friends, with whom she will stay in contact as she grows up. Life is a round of family occasions, church events and church politics, spiced with adventure and wild excitement in the countryside, mischief in the classroom. Detail is piled on detail and presented with photographic clarity, from her father, with his \u201clarge, pointed nose and grey eyes that looked greener than usual when he was outside in the vegetable patch\u201d, to the fall of the Twin Towers, which she recalls seeing \u201con a television in the school staff room \u2026 looking through the door from the outside and glimpsing it on the tiny screen\u201d.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/02ea73c706b63595b9a617eddbf0b00fdff21d47\/6_182_1452_1162\/master\/1452.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=3ef9f846ef0d03f35a103c0c6e6281cd\" "\\"Awake")
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