No And Me by Delphine de Vigan (Bloomsbury, £9.99) (From The Northern Echo)

No And Me by Delphine de Vigan (Bloomsbury, £9.99)

11:20am Saturday 20th March 2010 in

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FRENCH author de Vigan’s first novel published in English, this is a funny and tender story told through the eyes of an intellectually precocious 13-year-old.

Young Parisian Lou Bertignac has an IQ of 160. At school, she is more than capable, but unpopular.

A dreaded class presentation makes her life even more complicated.

Settling on the plight of the homeless as her topic, she is determined to make No – a pretty, but grubby homeless girl she encounters at Austerlitz station – her interviewee.

Lou wants to save No from life on the streets, but discovers she may not, after all, have the strength to make the world right.

Painfully honest and beautifully structured and written, this is worth having permanently on your bookshelf.

Trisha Andres