Borrowed Body, by Valerie Mason-John

The birth of Pauline Joy Charles is hardly an auspicious one - she is the product of a rape. Abandoned at a few weeks old by her Nigerian mother she spends most of her 1960s childhood in care, initially in white foster homes.

The birth of Pauline Joy Charles is hardly an auspicious one - she is the product of a rape. Abandoned at a few weeks old by her Nigerian mother she spends most of her 1960s childhood in care, initially in white foster homes. The longest stay is with a family where young Pauline screams in horror to see a Polaroid develop revealing her foster-sister Sally getting lighter while she remains dark. She subsequently tries to bleach and scrub herself white, to dip herself in flour and cover herself with chalk.

Borrowed Body is full of moments like these which convey both dramatic and quotidian realities of race and racism against a brilliantly evoked backdrop of 1960s and 1970s Britain. Each time Pauline has to leave another household she has learned to call home the only way she can cope with the loss is to pretend that those she has left behind are dead. Indeed, what is so heartbreaking about this novel is that every single one of her relationships is transient. There is no continuity, no security, no stability. Pauline's survival mechanism is to create imaginary friends, human, spirit and animal, with whom she escapes. Others see it as a kind of madness, but to Pauline they make a peculiar sense of growing up black and in care at a time when there was little awareness of what support was needed.

Aged four-and-a-half Pauline is sent to the legendary Dr Barnardo's Village in Essex where she lives in a cottage with two new, caring parents, Uncle Bruno and Aunty Claire, and some older Barnardo siblings. The family is large and lively, if somewhat dysfunctional, with the allegiances and rivalries of any other. But Pauline does not settle in easily, she is considered disruptive at school and has her mouth washed out with carbolic soap. Yet it is here in the village that she achieves some degree of happiness. There are trips to the forest, swimming in the village pool and friendships with other children. Not that this self-contained Barnardo's community is a safe haven. There is inter-child abuse and Pauline's nickname in the family is, wait for it, Minstrel. Once again, she has to leave the dead behind her when her brutal mother turns up to reclaim her.

In some ways this striking and unsettling debut novel is a lament for a childhood full of rejections and betrayals. Told mainly in the present tense, which is no mean feat, through the voice of Pauline, it speaks from the heart with a skilful stylistic assurance which keeps the pages turning and doesn't miss a beat. It could so easily have been an extended whine, but it's not. There is a neutrality in the storytelling which is neither full of self-pity or judgemental. This is an important story powerfully told with much to say about the perils of childhood and how we raise all children in our society.

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