West-Knights is also skilful in her depiction of domestic abuse, rarely showing it directly; the potential for an outburst, and the way the children learn to recognise the warning signs, is more chilling than any description of a punch thrown. A slow burn portrayal of how families can pull us apart but also how two siblings can find their way back to each other and to themselves. Imogen West Knights reveals family silence and repression in a way which feels almost agonisingly true to life. This was quite an interesting read about a brother and sister coming to terms with the death of their abusive father. Even if Tom had been a failed drama student but had some sort of redemption in this regard the constant poking at his degree may have felt slightly less like deja vu.

A brilliant page-turner - I also wanted to pause every few paragraphs and read aloud as a treat for whoever happened to be sitting next to me. It's valid that it all goes back to their upbringing and childhood but while we dug deeper, we didn't get to go broader. The novel is a serious and very accomplished examination of what it means to love and grieve for someone who might seem unlovable. Deep Down begins as Billie, a twentysomething Londoner, and her older brother Tom, a “failed actor” living in Paris, face unexpected news.West-Knights takes the tradition of the British family novel - with all its resentment, over-drinking and passive aggression - and transcends it: Deep Down is funny, sad, tender and hopeful. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. There is a LOT of description of movement from one place to another, which I find absolutely exhausting as a reader.

This perceptive account of the undercurrents that shape our family relationships and the ways in which they play out in adulthood had me gripped.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. I’m definitely categorising this one in the ‘sad girl reads’ section because it’s a pretty bleak and edgy take on family and grief. Woozily wandering between the arrondissements, the siblings dodge tourists and tiptoe around each other’s feelings, awaiting news of funeral plans. One of the remarkable things about Deep Down is how finely attuned it is to the way grief is intimately tangled up with ridiculousness. What initially seem to be the hallmarks of any repressed family – an inability to discuss death; tensions between divorced parents; a repeated insistence that everyone is ‘fine’ – become, as the novel unfolds, something far more disconcerting.

What West-Knights does so effectively here is to make no distinction between past and present; incidents from childhood are related in the same continuous present tense as the current events in Paris, with nothing so clunky as dates or chapter headings to mark the switch. I think if these lengthy descriptions of inane journeys had instead been used as deep dives into character psyches I would have felt more connected to Billie and Tom. Deep Down is something altogether darker; an examination of the legacy of abuse shot through with sharp wit and compassion.Our understanding of the characters is quite limited to their relationship and history with their father. Perhaps what is bravest about the novel’s artfully inconclusive ending is the painful acceptance that, with grief, there may never be a clear way out into the light. There are no histrionics here, nor any glib resolutions, but a superbly observed exploration of intimacy and its failings. The story is about Tom and Billie, they have both had a bereavement in the family and seeing as they both are so far away from each other they decide to reconnect and hope that being together will help with the grief.