When We Were Romans
By Matthew Kneale
Picador £7.99, 272 pages
FT bookshop price: £6.39

Convinced her estranged husband is stalking them, Hannah bundles her two kids into the car and drives to Rome. Her son Lawrence, old beyond his few years, must cope with both his annoying younger sister and his paranoid mother. Caught between Hannah’s incomprehensible stratagems and the uncomprehending immediacy of his sister, Lawrence’s fragile world is freighted with a painful sense of impending jeopardy. Kneale’s keen eye picks up the telling details of Lawrence’s practised attempts at shoring up his mother’s instabilities.