OUTSIDE, THE SKY IS BLUE is a beautifully drawn, heartbreaking yet also joyful memoir of growing up, of happiness and love, of living with physical and mental ill health, and of being the only one left of a family that had once had so much colour and life.

When Christina Patterson's brother Tom died a year ago, she was left clearing not only his flat but all the family papers and photographs he had stored. Christina, Tom and their other sister, Caroline were the offspring of a British father and a Swedish mother, who started out life as young diplomats in Thailand, but when the children were young, returned to live in the UK. There, they struggled to adopt the stifling social mores of the 1950s while also dealing with an elder daughter who appeared to change overnight from a happy, outgoing child to a sullen, often tempestuous teenager who was soon to be diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Rich with the detail of wild summer holidays spent scrabbling for berries in Sweden, of watching the etiquette of dreary cocktail parties, of long car journeys and the exhilaration of discovering religion and boys, OUTSIDE, THE SKY IS BLUE is an audiobook full of honesty and humour, about the dismantling jigsaw of family life and the love that carries them through.

(P) 2022 Headline Publishing Group Ltd