Mullaway

Mull, also confusingly known as Phoebe, has to leave school when her mother falls terminally ill, to look after her three siblings and her father who works nights. Her problems are just starting: she discovers her elder brother, who is trying to set up a rock band, shooting up; her younger sister is hair-wrenchingly precocious; and the younger brother, with a preference for the library rather than the beach like ordinary boys, has been inculcated into the ways of the Lord by their born-again father, who seems incapable of communicating with his children other than by reading them biblical quotes. Veering between the absorbing and the gauche, this is a gentle and at times poignant representation not only of teenagers and family life, but of someone young learning how to cope the hard way.