In New York, Noah, an elderly widowed professor of chemistry, is packing for a trip to celebrate his eightieth birthday in Nice, where he was born.

Akin
EMMA DONOGHUE
(PICADOR, 352 PP, £16.99)
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In New York, Noah, an elderly widowed professor of chemistry, is packing for a trip to celebrate his eightieth birthday in Nice, where he was born. The trip is part sentimental, and part an investigation into some unexplained photographs taken by his late mother in wartime Nice. In a single telephone call, his comfortable plans are overturned. A social worker rings to say that he is the only kin she can find to a boy in her charge who has nowhere to go. The boy’s father, Noah’s nephew, is dead from an overdose, his mother is in prison for dealing, and both his grandmothers are dead. There is no way out for great-uncle Noah, almost 80, but to take Michael, 11, along with him to Nice. Noah has never had ­children of his own, and is appalled at the prospect of looking after this streetwise boy from Brooklyn who spends his time gaming on his cracked old phone, and whose ­language, when comprehensible, is alarmingly colourful.

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