Paisley Girl

Dazzling in its language, exquisitely moving and desperately funny, Fran Gordon's Paisley Girl is a work of rare power. From the novel's first line - "Word has spread of my body" - we are thrust into the mind of a young unnamed woman whose skin is spiraled by mast-cell leukemia. Brilliant, panicked, obsessed, and richly human, she tumbles into a journey of discovery that carries her from backstage parties to hospitals, and from London flats to the shores of Barbados. Less a novel of disease than a tracing of the path from body to soul, Paisley Girl is a bold and unforgettable debut.