Nightingale Point is published by HQ (£12.99). Goldie was the winner of the Costa short story award in 2017 this finely crafted, compassionate debut fulfils that promise. The exquisite eye for detail and delicate turn of phrase will linger long after you’ve raced through the pages, too. This is a compelling novel, one in which the humanity of the characters is movingly articulated. It’s impossible to read about a tower block in flames without thinking of Grenfell, and while the author’s note says that the tragedy wasn’t her inspiration, she does dedicate the book to the Grenfell residents, and it brings the needlessness and horror of those events to life. What appears at first to be a very good but fairly predictable narrative of London lives woven together becomes something much more powerful when an accident destroys Nightingale Point and changes the characters’ worlds for ever – an event that Luan Goldie manages to make genuinely shocking and visceral on the page. He finds comfort in lists, schedules, Fray Bentos pies and his day nurse’s long, glittering pink nails. It made me cry several times.A few floors down is Elvis, one of Nightingale Point’s newest residents, a man with severe learning difficulties who has been placed there as part of a care in the community scheme.

Full of rich characters, beautifully described. This book pops, fizzes and sparkles to life' 'A beautiful and heartbreaking story about working-class people and their lives both before and after tragedy' What readers are saying about Nightingale Point: When the sun sets, Nightingale Point is irrevocably changed and somehow, through the darkness, the residents must find a way back to lightness, and back to each other. It's a day like any other, until something extraordinary happens. Pamela wants to run back to Malachi but her overprotective father has locked her in and there's no way out. No wonder he's falling in with the wrong crowd, without Malachi to keep him straight.Įlvis is trying hard to remember to the instructions his care worker gave him, but sometimes he gets confused and forgets things. Tristan wishes Malachi would stop pining for Pamela. Between looking after Tristan and nursing a broken heart, he feels older than his twenty-one years. Mary has a secret life that no one knows about, not even Malachi and Tristan, the brothers she vowed to look after. On an ordinary Saturday morning in 1996, the residents of Nightingale Point wake up to their normal lives and worries. 'A warm, confident writer with the lightest of touches' Observer 'A stunning debut that heralds a new and exciting voice in fiction' Mike Gayle, bestselling author of All The Lonely People

'A sharp, funny, wonderful writer' Diana Evans, bestselling author of Ordinary People THE DEBUT NOVEL FROM THE COSTA SHORT STORY AWARD WINNER

LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020

Luan goldie nightingale point