Canciani’s ambitious debut has an intriguing premise: 17-year-old Anna lives alone with her father, a paranoid hoarder who won’t let her outside – but when he overdoses, she must leave the teetering stacks of stuff behind and venture beyond the front door. Here she meets Lucky and Tick, a born-again Christian and his teenage drug-dealer son, who live on a brutally impoverished sink estate where desperate addicts chase a “spice”-like high known as “rabbits”.
Drawing on Canciani’s experiences of agoraphobia, the story is told in a tumbling syntax that reflects Anna’s bafflement with a world she barely understands: “They walked … into streets to the side and into the town and into the gutters and up the road and on and on to the ends of their lives.”
Despite some striking moments of alien’s-eye perspective (“She had not realised that the sky was different every day”), characters are thinly drawn and the plot ends up feeling muddled. But this twisted portrait of austerity Britain lingers in the memory: “Everyone needs help. Watch the news. Take a walk. People are poor and nuts. They’re sad.”
• The Insomnia Museum is published by Head of Zeus. To order a copy for £7.91 (RRP £8.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
