Girl in Red

The sustained tabloid campaign against asylum seekers and the vitriol expressed, in particular, against Gypsies from Romania make Hicyilmaz's new novel eerily topical. Teenager Frankie lives in a run down council block near the sea at Dover. Looking down from the balcony he catches sight of Emilia, a Roma wearing a long red skirt that trails in a puddle. Emilia fills his dreams and when she arrives at his school Frankie continues to idealise her and long to be with her in a touchingly depicted teenage crush. Meanwhile Frankie's mother initiates a campaign against the Gypsies that becomes a focus for the expression of racial hatred. For Frankie, torn by divided loyalties, there is the crushing disappointment of recognising the limited, hateful side to the mother he loves and his longing for 'a warmer place' to inhabit. This is a many faceted, subtle novel which dares to stay with disappointment and lost opportunities - Frankie's contemptuous dismissal of Lucky, his mum's boyfriend's daughter, as not worth getting to know and the pain of having a bigoted, narrow minded parent, for example, remain unresolved. And for Emilia, who has witnessed terrors in her homeland, there is to be no safe place.