My True Nature — Michael Jones

'I understand myself much better now. I understand my true nature. I know who I am and I know what I am. And I'm glad of who I am and what I am. I don't feel shame. I don't feel guilty. I feel proud.' He said, 'My daughter is a mute. She is obsessed with nakedness. You and your friend have told her things that no child of her age should know. She...' He lowered his voice, but we could just about hear him. 'She is exposed to your true nature every day.' It's 1961. Pippa is four, and already showing her extraordinary artistic talent. She is living in virtual isolation with her troubled mother, in a village in Northumberland. Pippa starts school, but discovers that life outside her house can be as complex and dangerous as life at home. Through Pippa's eyes, we explore the adult world, and how the boundaries between imagination, sensation and reality can become blurred. Around Pippa, we feel the destructive influence of religious bigotry and sexual intolerance. And, over everything, hangs the smell of the lingering smoke of events in The War. In The Angel and the Iceberg, we follow Pippa up to the age of nine. It is the first in the My True Nature series of novels, exploring Pippa's world as a child and teenager, growing up in Britain in the 1960s and '70s.