I very recently read Little Monsters, a novel by my Goodreads and Facebook friend, Charles Lambert. He's a Brit based in Italy at the moment, and has posted a couple of things on this site before.
But that's not the point of this post. Little Monsters has an arresting first line, "I was 13, my father killed my mother." You are immediately drawn into our poor orphan (her father is sent, understandably, to prison) Carol's life, as she is sent to live with her aunt Margot who can't stand the sight of her (we do find out why much later). The book moves between two decades - the first is during Carol's adolescence after the killing, and the second is when she is an adult and living with her lover - and uncle - Joey (this is less grotesque than it sounds).
As a first novel, Little Monsters is one of those books that doesn't excite you, it doesn't make you shout or cry or laugh out loud or cringe (well, it didn't make me do any of them, anyway), but when I got to the final sentence of the book, I closed it and thought to myself, "I enjoyed that."
That, in case you haven't guessed, is a recommendation.
