No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald review – a poignant tale of mothers and daughters

Orlaine McDonald’s blistering debut explores a year in the life of a working-class Black family reluctantly thrown together on a south London estate. Livia is dismayed when her estranged daughter, Mickey, turns up on her doorstep with her 10-year-old grandchild, Summer, in tow. She has worked hard to distance herself from her past. Fifteen years before, Livia walked out on a loving partner, Jimmy, as well as their daughter.

Devastated by her desertion, Mickey started failing at school, and became pregnant at 17. She in turn neglects her hyperactive daughter, Summer, who flounders at primary school, possibly with undiagnosed ADHD. They have few friends and no support network: “Perhaps it’s genetic.” Livia muses. “Perhaps there is something in the makeup of our biology, some mutation of cell, some scent we give off that turns other women away, some marker that we are predisposed for destruction.”

Related: Orlaine McDonald: ‘As a writer it’s important that I don’t look away’

As well as the three female perspectives, we hear from their dreadlocked neighbour Earl, nursing his own pain, while Livia’s mum, Meriam, speaks from beyond the grave. But Livia, the most developed character, seems to hold the key to their fractured existence. She describes how the “fear of being trapped walks its way like ants over my skin”. As an adolescent, she mistakenly believed that “sex equalled escape and freedom”. She struggled to conform to the constraints of motherhood and living with a white man: “For Jimmy’s family, my Blackness was something they would tolerate as long as I lived by their rules and strictures, which were opaque and constantly shifting.”

An astute portrait of trauma rippling down the generations, No Small Thing suggests that limited choices cause McDonald’s female characters to repeat the same mistakes. The author has a background in arts education for young people, and poignantly conveys how the grinding cycle of poverty takes its toll on the vulnerable, wreaking havoc on youthful lives, stifling expression. Although stark, this is an invigorating read, and certain threads hint at the possibility of redemption.

• No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald is published by Serpent’s Tail (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply