Porcupines

<p><b> A dazzling mother-daughter story Jenny Jackson, author of <i>Pineapple Street</i></b><br><br><b>'Funny, acerbic, and wonderfully playful: a novel to sink into' NAOMI WOOD, author of <i>Mrs. Hemingway</i><br><br>'Destined to become an instant classic. Richly drawn characters in an immigrant journey as old as America herself' ADRIANA TRIGIANI, author of <i>The View From Lake Como</i></b> <br><br>Los Angeles, 2001. Sonia is raising her daughter, Mila, alone in the sunny but somnolent suburbs of LA. Her days are a blur of not-quite-illegal business activities, avoiding other moms, and baking birthday cakes laced with rum: minor mistakes that nevertheless remind her she doesn t belong.<br>Mila, meanwhile, is juggling violin and swimming lessons and navigating the treacherous social politics of school all the while trying to get her mother to share something, anything, about her past.<br><br>But there are just too many things that Mila doesn t know:</p><p><br></p><ul><li>She doesn t know that her mother grew up in Soviet Hungary (where getting your hands on a banana was one of the greatest thrills in life)</li><li>She doesn t know that her mother has a sister called Rina (whom she hasn t spoken to in 10 years)</li><li>The only thing she <i>does </i>know about her father is that he was a good time (according to her mother)</li><li>Crucially, she doesn t know that there is a very good reason why her mother dodges everyone, from traffic cops to vice principals.</li></ul><p><br>So, Mila concocts a scheme to get her mother, and the man Mila is <i>kind of sure </i>must be her father to reconnect. It involves corralling Sonia into chaperoning an orchestra of ten-year-olds (most of whom seem to be called Megan) on a road trip from LA to San Francisco, and it may just cause their carefully constructed lives to implode.<br><br>Moving between Budapest before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington, DC in the tense years of the Cold War and the bright sunshine of early 2000s Los Angeles, <i>Porcupines</i> is an irresistible novel about mothers and daughters, belonging and reinvention, the things we carry with us, and those we tell ourselves we ve left behind.<br></p>