THE SECRET LIFE OF A SLUMMY MUMMY by Fiona Neill

Century, £10 £8 Buy the book from Books First £6.64 including free delivery

Yes, yes, we’ve seen it all before – the inner thoughts of a scatty middle-class mum in a perpetual muddle, married to “Husband on a Short Fuse” and fantasising about “Sexy Domesticated Dad”. But this slice of angst and affluenza, which started life as a column in the Times Magazine, is several cuts above the rest. The writing is witty, observant and supremely intelligent. “Somewhere in the domestic mayhem,” Neill’s heroine muses, “I have lost myself.” Beneath the comedy is a serious look at the work/home conflict at the heart of modern motherhood – what’s the point of ambition when all roads lead to bottom-wiping?

WINTER UNDER WATER by James Hopkin

Picador, £12.99 Buy the book from Books FIrst £7.59 including free delivery

A chilly and atmospheric first novel about crossing cultures. Joseph falls in love with a Polish girl named Marta. When she goes home, they maintain their affair through letters and phone calls. Then Joseph decides to go to Poland. The novel begins with his arrival, and his immediate sense of isolation. The cold takes his breath away. The city, “trapped beneath a frost that fits as precisely as a press-stud”, is alien and forbidding. Hopkin beautifully conveys the sense of being a stranger in a strange land, struggling to reach a true understanding of the woman he loves.

OYSTERCATCHERS by Susan Fletcher

Fourth Estate £14.99 Buy the book from Books First £7.59 including free delivery

Amy has been in a coma for four years, after falling from a cliff. Moira, her sister, sits beside her in the evenings, pouring anguished confessions into Amy’s unhearing ears. Moira sees that she has been a selfish daughter, a deceiving wife and – above all – a cruel sister. If she had been a better person, would Amy be lying here now? Amy’s birth unfortunately coincided with her big sister’s traumatic removal to boarding school. Fletcher is highly sensitive to the complex web of jealousies and half truths that simmer within the nicest families.

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