Trouble Was Author: Charlotte Edwardes ISBN-13: 978-1526698605Publisher: BloomsburyGuideline Price: £16.99; 304ppThe debut novel by award-winning British journalist Charlotte Edwardes is set during the oft-mythologised heatwave and drought of 1976. The extreme weather is the perfect intensifier for the pressure cooker that her child protagonist Frank Dart is living in. Nine-year-old Frank has moved to his Aunt Perry’s house in north Devon with his erratic mother and younger siblings, Odette and Patrick. Their father is “away at sea”; their aunt punitive and judgemental; their cousins malicious and hostile. Frank is “the best boy ever”, the self-appointed guardian of the littler ones and diviner of his mother’s moods, with his small hand always attempting to steady the ship. Although Aunt Perry is “filthy rich”, the big house in the country is shambolic, with maggots in the kitchen sink and foul water from the well. Amid the casual cruelty of their existence in their half of the house, Frank is desperately trying to solve the mysteries surrounding his father’s absence, while navigating the regular childhood travails of attempting to make friends and his own longing for fun and affection. The traumatic incidents experienced by the children make for difficult reading, although Edwards handles these with grace and does not linger in the discomfort. As adult readers, we have the benefit of dramatic irony to discern a lot from the little Frank tells us. Readers who are fans of child narrators will undoubtedly be smitten with Frank. He is deeply empathetic, erudite, intelligent, with an artistic soul through which he perceives the wonder of the world. It is difficult to discern, however, from where in time the story is narrated. For the most part, Frank appears to be giving us an account of the recent past, from within his child’s understanding. On occasion, however, his lexicon and observations shift to sounding much more adult, offering a perspective that belies his years, his hard-won wisdom notwithstanding. The author’s own writerly skill may simply be overpowering his child’s voice when, for example, Frank says he “detected the elastic note of a whinge” of his cousin or observes that he himself was “so deep in reveries”. He also possesses at times an extremely acute understanding of what was happening and prescience for the impact it will have, saying, for example, “that this image of him would remain buried somewhere in my mind, an imprint that resisted all effort to erase.”To view the world through the lens of Frank Dart is, nonetheless, a moving and captivating experience. Edwardes writes the toughness of toxic families with great tenderness. This is a powerful evocation of childhood and the treachery of the adults who are meant to protect then.Helen Cullen is the author of The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually and the forthcoming Iseult