Lloyd Jones — Hand Me Down World

Penguin Group New Zealand, Limited 2010 Paperback, 288pp. Lloyd Jones - author of the bestselling 'Mister Pip', short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and winner of the Montana Medal for Fiction and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize - has delivered a poignant tale of a mother's quest to be united with her child. HAND ME DOWN WORLD tells the story of a nameless African woman who sees her baby taken away from her just a few weeks after giving birth. Her journey to find him relies on the barest of resources as she tracks him across continents, from the shoreline of Tunisia to the confusion of Berlin. It is her encounters with an array of individuals along the way, and with love and betrayal in their many guises, that give the book its kaleidoscopic and haunting tone. When the truth is dramatically revealed, it throws into doubt everything that has been accepted at face value before. Some tanning. (ISBN: 9780143205098). Good.