Porcupines

'Now, remember, Mila, we live about a five-minute drive away, your mother works at an office, and you're not Russian, your mother just liked the sound of your name." Mila nods vigorously-a model pupil, for now, at least.

"Any follow-up questions, then what do we say?"
"Mind your own business." "That's right.'

Porcupines begins in 1989 when the world has opened up again after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Szonja Imre travels from Budapest to visit her older sister in Los Angeles. She's an eighteen-year-old in search of adventure in the land of the free. But she is surprised to find that the sister she's always idolised has a very different idea of what it means to live the American dream.

Porcupines also begins in 2001, when Mila, Sonia's precocious, socially awkward 10-year-old daughter, concocts a scheme, inspired by those excellent life-bibles Sleepless in Seattle and The Parent Trap, to get her mother and the man Mila is kind of sure must be her father to reconnect.

The plan involves Sonia being corralled into chaperoning an orchestra of nine-year-olds (most of whom seem to be called Megan) on a road trip from LA to San Francisco, some badly spelled emails, a jar of several thousand jelly beans and a whole bunch of misassumptions.

Porcupines shuttles dazzlingly between these two time lines as the fallout from Mila's best laid plans has repercussions far beyond her imaginings, and the secrets Sonia has been holding tight to for the last decade spill out all over her carefully constructed life.

This is a deliciously funny and poignant story about family and history, immigration and belonging, and what happens when walls begin to come down.