Saltwater - Jessica Andrews

This "luminous" (The Observer) feminist coming-of-age novel captures in sensuous, blistering prose the richness and imperfection of the bond between a daughter and her mother

It begins with our bodies . . . Safe together in the violet dark and yet already there are spaces beginning to open between us.
From that first salty, viscous connection, through the ups and downs of a working-class childhood in northern England, the one constant in Lucy's life has been her mother: comforting and mysterious, ferociously loving, tirelessly devoted, as much a part of Lucy as her own skin. Her lessons in womanhood shape Lucy's appreciation for desire, her sense of duty as a caretaker, her hunger for a better, maybe reckless life.
At university, Lucy's background sets her apart from her classmates and London, even as she struggles with the excruciating, slow separation from her mother. Her father goes missing just after she...