Poppy Shakespeare Clare Allan Poppy shakespeare Bloomsbury 341 £7.99 9780747585848 0747585849

Clare Allan’s debut novel focuses on the lives of N, a long-term day patient with a history of mental health problems going back to her time in her mother’s womb, and Poppy, a mother-of-one who finds herself thrust into the unfamiliar world of psychiatric day care. Narrated by N and set in the Dorothy Fish, a psychiatric day hospital, it explores the lives of ‘dribblers’ – patients whose sole reason for existence is not to be discharged from day-care. Poppy, on the other hand, stands in contrast to the ‘dribblers’ as a woman whose sole aim is to escape the labels and restrictions forced upon her by a system with a disproportionate amount of power over people’s lives. When N is drafted by a staff member to induct Poppy into the day-care world, they are drawn into a relationship that is as rewarding as it is destructive, as mutually beneficial as it is damaging, and which slowly but steadily leads to an unforeseeable climax.