Review: Respect

by Mandasue Heller (Hodder and Stoughton)

“Get the f*** out of my house, you stinking, cheating, lying bastard! Go on, f*** off – and don’t come back.”

In case you are wondering about the language, that’s about as endearing as 15-year-old Chantelle Booth’s mother gets.

How Chantelle – who lives with her low-life mom, Mary, and her 8-year-old brother Leon, on a decaying Manchester council estate – has managed to reach the age of 15, without falling into the lifestyle of drugs, abusive sex and alcohol that surrounds her, is a mystery.

Chantelle plans to stick to school, pass her exams, and get the hell out of there.

Her mother’s plans are to leave her children without food, pick up her benefit cheque, and go shoplifting. One night, the drunk mom picks up a drunk Spaniard. Within days, she deserts her children, hotfooting it to Spain with the creep – and clutching the benefit money for good measure.

On top of this, Mary owes money to a dealer who is happy to force his way into their home and rough up anyone he finds.

There goes Chantelle’s revision for exams, there go the bill payments, food, and anything else she might have expected from a parent.

She must take on the duties of a responsible parent for Leon, and on an estate where 8-year-old children are “gofers” for drug-dealing gangs, this isn’t an easy task.

Each time the vicious Mary lurches in and out of her children’s lives, – mainly for money – I find my hand balling into a fist. To use the vernacular, this character should have been “banged up” in a cell on the first page.

But this is no fairy tale. Mandasue Heller creates real characters who creep under your skin – you can almost hear their voices and feel their misery.

The only light at the end of Chantelle’s tunnel seems to be the part-time job she has, to help make ends meet. Unsurprisingly, the light is just a fast approaching train, and the one person who might be the hero she needs, is an ex-convict.

An upsetting but well-developed tale of a teenager trying to escape the criminal element of UK council estates.

Not an easy read, but compelling.