Real Life

Her house has four bedrooms: her own, her little brother Sam's room, that of her parents, and the one with the carcasses. Her father is a big-game hunter, a powerful predator, and her mother a fragile, trembling amoeba, submissive to her violent husband's demands. The young narrator spends the days playing with Sam in the shells of cars dumped for scrap, while listening out for the melody of the ice-cream truck. Until a brutal accident shatters this routine. Adeline Dieudonne 's uncompromising pen conjures an imaginative world that is both dark and sensual, peopled with extreme characters brought to life with brilliance and invention. This breathtaking debut is a sharp and funny coming-of-age tale in which reality and fantasy collide.