Clay

By Melissa Harrison

Eight-year-old TC skips school to explore the city's overgrown, forgotten corners. Sophia, seventy-eight, watches with concern as he slips past her window, through the little park she loves. She's writing to her granddaughter, Daisy, whose privileged upbringing means she exists in a different world from TC – though the two children live less than a mile apart.

Jozef spends his days doing house clearances, his nights working in a takeaway. He can't forget the farm he left behind in Poland, its woods and fields still a part of him, although he is a thousand miles away. When he meets TC he finds a kindred spirit: both lonely, both looking for something, both lost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jan 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781408833551

Melissa Harrison

Melissa Harrison is the author of the novels Clay and At Hawthorn Time, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize, and one work of non-fiction, Rain, which was longlisted forthe Wainwright Prize. She is a nature writer, critic and columnist for TheTimes, the Financial Times and the Guardian, among others. Her new novel All Among the Barley is due for publication in August this year. @M_Z_Harrison