LOVE, NINA: DESPATCHES FROM FAMILY LIFE

ONE DAY I SHALL ASTONISH THE WORLD

Susan and Norma have been best friends for years, at first thrust together by force of circumstance (a job at The Pin Cushion, a haberdashery shop in 1990s Leicestershire) and then by force of character (neither being particularly inclined to make friends with anyone else). But now, 30 years later, faced with a husband seeking immortality and Norma out of reach on a wave of professional glory, Susan begins to wonder whether she has made the right choices about life, love, work and, most importantly, friendship.

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

Lizzie Vogel leaves her alcoholic, novel-writing mother and heads for Leicester to work for a racist, barely competent dentist, obsessed with joining the freemasons. Soon Lizzie is heading reluctantly, at top speed, into the murky depths of adult life: where her driving instructor becomes her best friend; her first boyfriend prefers birdwatching to sex and where independence for a teenage girl might just be another word for loneliness.