Cartwright's elegiac portrait of Dudley in the 80s is interspersed with quotations from Mrs Thatcher that, given the protagonist's murderous loathing of her, are presumably meant to illustrate her evil. Yet they seem, oddly, to undermine his purpose. As a student when Thatcher came to power, I raised money for the miners' wives and went to Anti-Nazi League rallies, shouting anti-Thatcher slogans until I was hoarse. Now, her talk of "putting a nest egg by" and "working together to overcome adversity" sounds reassuring and decent. Sean Bull is a child when Mrs T is first elected. His mum and dad are aspirational, moving up the social ladder just as Thatcher wanted the working classes to do. But the death throes of West Midlands manufacturing rip through the family, leaving Sean raw, angry and fired up by his young uncle's communist rhetoric. Woven into the child Sean's narrative of fear and loathing is the voice of his older self, quiet, almost broken, and seemingly resigned to having become, like it or not, middle class.