*A teacher asked me a question, and I opened my mouth as a sort of formality but closed it softly, knowing with perfect certainty that nothing would ever come out again.*Ruby gives up talking at a young age. Her mother isn’t always there to notice; she comes and goes and goes and comes, until, one d...

*A teacher asked me a question, and I opened my mouth as a sort of formality but closed it softly, knowing with perfect certainty that nothing would ever come out again.*Ruby gives up talking at a young age. Her mother isn’t always there to notice; she comes and goes and goes and comes, until, one day, she doesn’t. Silence becomes Ruby’s refuge, sheltering her from the weather of her mother’s mental illness and a pressurized suburban atmosphere.

Plangent, deft, and sparkling with wry humour,* Somebody Loves You * is a moving exploration of how we choose or refuse to tell the stories that shape us.‘Each sentence has the cadence of poetry, each phrase perfectly chosen, each word correctly weighed. This is a novel which reminds us memory and narrative are often not complete but rather are crystallised glimpses, which turn like a kaleidoscope through our mind.’ --Andrew McMillanMona Arshi was born in West London, where she still lives. Her debut poetry collection Small Hands was published in 2015, winning the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and her work has since appeared in The Sunday Times, The Guardian and the Times of India, as well as being selected for inclusion in the Poems on the Underground series. Mona Arshi is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4.