"My mother, of course, was never boring. At the house in Lucas Street she took a hammer to the wall in the middle of the night."

Amy hasn't spoken to her mother for seventeen years, but a sense of duty brings her to the hospital when she's told that her mother is unconscious and dying. As she sits, solitary, at the bedside, she tells the story of her turbulent childhood, dragged along in the wake of her volatile, destructive mother.
After an acrimonious divorce, Amy's mother rushes through a succession of unreliable boyfriends and plunges herself and her young daughter into a series of temporary homes, including a dangerous hostel, a flimsy caravan, an artists' commune with no electricity and bird droppings in the hearth, and a rented house that she smashes and burns to the ground. When stability at last comes into their lives, Amy's mother seems determined to destroy it, leading to a final, devastating betrayal.
This is the story of a vicious love-hate relationship, a bond that can never really be broken, and a life spent seeking a home.