The novel opens with the narrator and his wife agonising over whether to terminate a pregnancy – because their baby almost certainly has a rare genetic abnormality. They opt for an abortion, and later have a son – who in his early years is “slow to develop”. In “deceptively simple, pared-back” prose, the narrator details all the “difficult emotions” this engenders. “This is a complicated story, told with fearless honesty,” said James Smart in The Guardian. Although funny at times, it has a “thoughtful frankness” that can “stop you in your tracks”. In depicting it as “baffling, traumatic and transformative”, Ho Davies’s portrait of fatherhood feels refreshingly true to life.