Description: Lisa has high hopes for her first year in London. She is sixteen and ambitious to become more like her sister, Ruby. Ruby lives her life to the full. She has cropped hair, a past, and a rockabilly boyfriend whose father is in prison. But Lisa is unable to compete. She is afraid - afraid of the drugs she has to take, of the sex she should have had, and of walking too close to the tower block that looms over the one-bedroom flat she shares with her mother and her small half brother, Max. When Max refuses to be prized out of his plastic armor, when the council makes no attempt to rehouse them, when the excesses of Ruby's life land her in the hospital, Lisa realizes for the first time that she is the one truly sane and sensible member of the family. Spare, elegant, and sometimes heartbreakingly funny, Peerless Flats is an astonishing and moving portrait of adolescence, family life, and London in the 1970s. It more than confirms the promise of Esther Freud's remarkable debut, Hideous Kinky.

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